"We actually don't know the function of sleep all that well yet, but sleep is a time of quiescence in the brain."

“When one meddles with the direction of a revolution, the problem is not how to make it go but how to keep it under control.”

“I always figured I myself would never be lucky enough to die, I'd just live on and on in this increasingly dreary spiral.”

“You can get ahead in the world. But you will have to work, you will have to want tremendously to accomplish something, and then be willing to pay the price. Are you willing?”

“I'd have to be superman to do some of the things I'm supposed to have done, I've been at six different places at six different times.”

“Compassion- which means, literally, "to suffer with"- is the way to the truth that we are most ourselves, not when we differ from others, but when we are the same. Indeed the main spiritual question is not, "What difference do you make?" but "What do you have in common?" It is not "excelling" but "serving" that makes us most human. It is not proving ourselves to be better than others but confessing to be just like others that is the way to healing and reconciliation.”

“Thus there is no doubt the eye was intended for us to see with.”

Source : Joseph Butler, Stephen L. Darwall (1983). “Five Sermons, Preached at the Rolls Chapel and A Dissertation Upon the Nature of Virtue”, p.34, Hackett Publishing

“Whoever has received knowledge and eloquence in speech from God should not be silent or secretive but demonstrate it willingly. When a great good is widely heard of, then, and only then, does it bloom, and when that good is praised by man, it has spread its blossoms.”

“I've always written in a free, unencumbered way.”

Source : "I prefer birdsong to chatter". Interview with Helen Birch, www.theguardian.com. November 4, 2005.