"If the world will be gulled, let it be gulled." (Robert Burton)

"Everything that deceives may be said to enchant." (Plato)

Wagger, n. The agreeable swaying a dog makes when it walks; akin to ‘swagger’ for humans.

“That dog’s got real wagger “

“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.” (Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast)

"'Monkeys, gorillas, they have brains and we have a brain, but they don't have this thing, the thumb. They can't move it opposite the way we do. The inner digit on the hand of man, that might be the distinguishing physical feature between ourselves and the rest of the animals. And the glove protects that inner digit. The ladies' glove, the welder's glove, the rubber glove, the baseball glove, et cetera. This is the root of humanity, this opposable thumb. It enables us to make tools and build cities and everything else. More than the brain. Maybe some other animals have bigger brains in proportion to their bodies than we have. I don't know. But the hand itself is an intricate thing. It moves. There is no other part of a human being that is clothed that is such a complex moving structure....' And that was when Vicky popped in the door with the size-four finished gloves." (Philip Roth, American Pastoral)

"The sleep of the laboring person is sweet..." (Ecclesiastes 5:12)

"But good writers have a reason for doing things the way they do them, and if you tinker with their work, taking it upon yourself to neutralize a slightly eccentric usage or zap a comma or sharpen the emphasis of something that the writer was deliberately keeping obscure, you are not helping. In my experience, the really great writers enjoy the editorial process. They weigh queries, and they accept or reject them for good reasons. They are not defensive. The whole point of having things read before publication is to test their effect on a general reader. You want to make sure when you go out there that the tag on the back of your collar isn't poking up—unless, of course, you are deliberately wearing your clothes inside out." (Mary Norris, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen)

“Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)

"The Almighty has His own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him. Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said: 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" (Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1864)

You can't spell "sanity" without "insanity."

Mark Zuckerberg kills goats with laser guns.

"This is what I want in heaven... words to become notes and conversations to be symphonies." (Tina Turner)

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” (The Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical, Coptic-language, gnostic gospel consisting of 114 sayings from [they say] Jesus; later suppressed as heresy by early church fathers, only to be rediscovered in 1940s Upper Egypt)

"Why do we feel guilty, even when we've done nothing to bring on illness or death... Suffering feels like punishment, as cultural anthropologists observe." (Elaine Pagels, Why Religion?: A Personal Story)

"I would rather marry a good man, a man of mind, with a hope and bright prospects ahead for position, fame and power than to marry all the houses, gold and bones in the world." (Mary Todd Lincoln)

"A kiss that is never tasted forever and ever is wasted." (from the 1934 song "For All We Know" with lyrics by Sam M. Lewis, music by J. Fred Coots, and sung by Billie Holiday on 1958's Lady in Satin, her penultimate record)

“All music is folk music; I ain't never heard a horse sing a song.” (Louis Armstrong)

"I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That's all I know." (Billie Holiday)

"In the place where I am now, I look back over my life. I look back at the world I’ve left behind. What message do I want to leave? I want to make sure that you all understand that each and every one of you has a role to play. You may not know it, you may not find it, but your life matters, and you are here for a reason...

"And I just hope that reason will become apparent as you live through your life. I want you to know that, whether or not you find that role that you’re supposed to play, your life does matter, and that every single day you live, you make a difference in the world. And you get to choose the difference that you make." (Jane Goodall's final message to the world, spoken six months before her death)

"A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it's not open." (Frank Zappa)