"Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result -- eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly -- in you."

"If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans."

"Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

"I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them"

"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another."

"I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good."

"The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

"If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,Or being hated, don't give way to hating,And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wiseIf you can dream - and not make dreams your master;If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;If you can meet with Triumph and DisasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you've spokenTwisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out toolsIf you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,And lose, and start again at your beginningsAnd never breathe a word about your loss;If you can force your heart and nerve and sinewTo serve your turn long after they are gone,And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept the will which says to them: 'Hold on!'If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,If all men count with you, but none too much;If you can fill the unforgiving minuteWith sixty seconds' worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!"

"That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!"

"Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you."

"In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."

"A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world."

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

"Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane."

"The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."

"Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is."

"There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it"

"How would your life be different if…You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day…You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey."

"I think I've discovered the secret of life -- you just hang around until you get used to it."

"There is no good and evil, there is only power and those too weak to seek it."

"When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore."