"If you set out to meditate, it will not be meditation. If you set out to be good, goodness will never flower."

“I would say that Barack Obama not only made me a better person but made me better at my job. He's one of the most intellectually curious people you'll ever meet and really brings that out in other people.”

Source : Source: www.popsugar.com

“A daughter is the happy memories of the past, the joyful moments of the present, and the hope and promise of the future.”

“The day before yesterday has always been a day of glamor, of gilt and glory. The present is sordid and prosaic. Time colors history as it does a meerschaum pipe.”

Source : "Persons from Porlock: And Other Interruptions".

“A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane As night descends upon the fabled street: A lonely hansom splashes through the rain, And ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet. Here though the world explode, these two survive, And it is always eighteen ninety-five.”

Source : Vincent Starrett, Peter Ruber (1995). “More Books Alive: New Treasures from a Master Literary Detective”, Battered Silicon Dispatch Box

“My family especially has always taught me to be myself and not let other people's opinions change me. To always believe my instincts and follow my heart.”

“The Five Points was the toughest street corner in the world. That's how it was known. In fact, Charles Dickens visited it in the 1850s and he said it was worse than anything he'd seen in the East End of London.”

“American history is a quagmire, and the more one knows, the quaggier the mire gets.”

Source : Sarah Vowell (2003). “The Partly Cloudy Patriot”, p.156, Simon and Schuster

“Adversity tests us from time to time and it is inevitable that this testing continues during life.”