"Sometimes you gotta laugh through the tears, smile through the pain so that you can live through the sorrow."

“After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there.”

“I have remained true to my deepest convictions. I mean the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy—for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?”

Source : Penelope Fitzgerald (2009). “A House of Air”, p.13, HarperCollins UK

“The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”

“But you will be hard-pressed to find more than a few novels, films, news stories, and TV shows that dare to depict life as a gift whose purpose is to enrich the human soul.”

“All political power is primarily an illusion. Illusion. Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors, first a thin veil of blue smoke, then a thick cloud that suddenly dissolves into wisps of blue smoke, the mirrors catching it all, bouncing it back and forth.”

Source : How the Good Guys Finally Won: Notes from an Impeachment Summer (1975). Usually quoted as "smoke and mirrors."

“Why the Christian life is so difficult to many is because they have a divided heart. They are double-minded, which makes them unstable in all their ways.”

“Successful men are influenced by the desire for pleasing results. Failures are influenced by the desire for pleasing methods and are inclined to be satisfied with such results as can be obtained by doing things they like to do. The common denominator of success - the secret of every man who has ever been successful - lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do.”

“The great difficulty with large canvases is that they should by right be painted as fast as a sketch. By speed only can you gain an appearance of fleeting effect. But to paint a three yard canvas with the same dispatch as one of ten inches is well-nigh impossible.”