"Grudge no expense - yield to no opposition - forget fatigue - till, by the strength of prayer and sacrifice, the spirit of love shall have overcome ."

“Oddly, though, lists are reassuring. We become aware of this if we scrupulously follow a recipe, which is essentially a list of ingredients and actions; but if we give this 'list' too much importance, we leave no room for the imagination.”

“It began with one act of madness, and it ended with another. John Brown heard history's clock strike in the night and tried to hurry dawn along with gunfire; now John Wilkes Booth heard the clock strike, and he tried with gunfire to restore the darkness. Each man stood outside the human community, directed by voices the sane do not hear, and each kept history from going logically... The line from Harper's Ferry to Ford's Theater is a red thread binding the immense disorder of the Civil War into an irrational sort of coherence.”

“The dog [in Pavlov's experiments] does not continue to salivate whenever it hears a bell unless sometimes at least an edible offering accompanies the bell. But there are innumerable instances in human life where a single association, never reinforced, results in the establishment of a life-long dynamic system. An experience associated only once with a bereavement, an accident, or a battle, may become the center of a permanent phobia or complex, not in the least dependent on a recurrence of the original shock.”

Source : John Lukacs (1970). “The Passing of the Modern Age”

“There are many misconceptions about depression-mostly negative. Unfortunately, because depressed people think negatively about depression and its treatment, they don't get help, which allows the depression to worsen, which leads to more negative thinking, which produces a vicious cycle of suffering.”

“Many men are stored full of unused knowledge. Like loaded guns that are never fired off, or military magazines in times of peace, they are stuffed with useless ammunition.”

“A study of interactions between women and obstetricians offers an explanation. It described three levels of increasing power imbalance: In the first, you fight and lose; in the second you don't fight because you know you can't win. However, in the highest level of power differential, your preferences are so manipulated that you act against your own interests, but you are content. Elective [meaning requested for no medical reason, not to be confused with needed surgery planned in advance] repeat cesarean exemplifies that highest level.”

Source : Henci Goer (1999). “The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth”, p.163, Penguin

“Menuhin was playing Bach on a fantastic spiritual level when he was a teenager.”

Source : "Nigel Kennedy accuses fellow violinists of destroying Bach's legacy" by Dalya Alberge, www.theguardian.com. August 13, 2011.

“I'm one of these people that if I have a nice holiday - like I have had in Turkey repeatedly - I go back a lot.”