And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. 
- Shakespeare, Henry V

"Anticipation itself is a sensory delight; a moment to be savoured and relished; not to be rushed into and wallowed in like swine in a trough."
- Major Charles Emerson Winchester III

The Blue of Distance, 2008

"I use landscape to change my emotional state."

- Catherine Opie

Georgia O'Keeffe, Starlight Night, 1917

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying or reassuring."
- Carl Sagan

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.
"Two ways." Mike said. "Gradually, then suddenly."
- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

"[Globally] there are more people with mobile phones than toilets."
- Rockefeller Foundation

Andy Dufresne: You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?
Red: No.
Andy Dufresne: They say it has no memory. That's where I want to live the rest of my life. A warm place with no memory. 

Wayne Gretzky weighed 165 lbs when he was in the NHL.

"Lyndon Johnson couldn't stand to be alone."
- Robert Caro

"A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do."
- Woodrow Wilson

maxim

"No one under the age of thirty should read Tolstoy." 

a patriotic poem

BREATHES there the man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
'This is my own, my native land!'
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd	5
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;	10
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,	15
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung. - Patriotism, Sir Walter Scott [1771-1832]

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history that we make today."

- Henry Ford

"When you see a fork in the road, take it."
- Yogi Berra

Fourteen US vice presidents have become president,

eight because of the death of a president. These eight so-called 'accidental presidents' were John Tyler (VP for W, H. Harrison) Millard Fillmore (VP for Taylor) Andrew Johnson (VP for Lincoln), Chester A. Arthur (VP for Garfield), Theodore Roosevelt(VP for McKinley), Calvin Coolidge (VP for Harding), Harry S. Truman (VP for F.D. Roosevelt), and Lyndon B. Johnson (VP for Kennedy). Vice-president Gerald Ford (VP for Nixon) took office because of President Nixon's resignation. The other vice presidents who became president were John Adams (VP for Washington), Thomas Jefferson, (VP for John Adams), Martin Van Buren (VP for Jackson), Richard M. Nixon (VP for Eisenhower) and George H. W. Bush (VP for Reagan). Of these six, all but Nixon were elected president immediately after serving as vice president. Nixon was defeated in 1960 but ran again and won in 1968.

Source here.

"I don't know many people who sit back and look at their stuff and say, 'Fantastic!' - in many different professions their eye goes to the problem; not to what works."
- Martin Short 

"We can never tell what is in store for us."
- Harry Truman

The Buddha was a meat eater.

"But I believe that to be forgiven, more than sorrow is required - at least two more things. First, genuine repentance - a determination to change and to repair breaches of my own making. I have repented. Second, what my bible calls a ''broken spirit''; an understanding that I must have God's help to be the person that I want to be; a willingness to give the very forgiveness I seek; a renunciation of the pride and the anger which cloud judgment, lead people to excuse and compare and to blame and complain."

- Bill Clinton's entire speech here.

"Everybody deserves a fresh start every once in a while."
- Bugsy Siegel

"He who pursues revenge should dig two graves."
- Chinese proverb

Heads were shrunk to prevent opponent souls from seeking revenge.

Mine honour is my life; both grow in one:

Take honour from me and my life is done

- Shakespeare in Richard II

"If it ain't broke, insist that it is and maybe they'll hire you to fix it."
- Stephen Colbert

Hear me now 

Oh, thou bleak and unbearable world 

Thou art base and debauched as can be 

And the knight with his banners all bravely unfurled 

Now hurls down his gauntlet to thee

I am I, Don Quixote The Lord of La Mancha 

My destiny calls and I go 

And the wild winds of fortune
Will carry me onward
Whithersoever they blow 

Whithersoever they blow 

Onward to glory I go
- Man of La Mancha

"The rich man was not in Hell because he was rich, but because he was proud. And the poor man was in Heaven not because he was poor, but because he was humble."
- Sentiments attributed to St. Augustine

"Rather than market research, I preferred to use intuition."
- Alberto Alessi 

"You know a design is good if you want to lick it."
- Steve Jobs

"Life is often strange and unresolved."
- Harold Pinter

"If all the theatres in the world closed tomorrow, not only would nobody care but nobody would notice."
- Orson Welles