Jeffrey Simpson:  

of reading ..." -- Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy) *** <b>Ludwig van Beethoven</b>: Music is... a dreadful thing. What is it? I don't understand it. What does it mean? <b>Schindler</b>: It - it exalts the soul. <b>Beethoven</b>: Utter nonsense. If you hear a marching band, is your soul exalted? No, you march ... It is the power of music to carry one directly into the mental state of the composer. The listener has no choice. ("Immortal Beloved," dir. Bernard Rose, 1994) *** "I hate quotes. Tell me what you know." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson *** "Teach us to give and not to count the cost." -- Ignatius Loyola *** "One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe *** ‎"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over." -- James Boswell, "The Life of Samuel Johnson" *** “I know nothing, except what everyone knows – if there when Grace dances, I should dance.” -- W.H. Auden *** “I understand that (by Grace) Auden meant grace in the theological sense, meant it as the force that infuses our lives and keeps letting us off the hook. It is unearned love – the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.” -- Anne Lamott *** ‎"Where our language suggests body and there is none: there, we should like to say, is a spirit." Ludwig Wittgenstein *** "In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths." -- Graham Greene *** "Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered." -- Graham Greene *** "The chief virtues of cheap wine are two: It is cheap, and it is wine." -- Rheinhard Schpecklenburg *** "I am the vessel. The draft is God's. And God is the thirsty one." -- Dag Hammarskjold *** "A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." -- Thomas Mann *** "War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace." -- Thomas Mann *** “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” -- Albert Einstein ***".