Smart as a Whip, Sharp as a Tack

What matters isn't how a person's inner life finally puts together the alphabet and numbers of his outer life. What really matters is whether he uses the alphabet for the declaration of a war or the description of a sunrise—his numbers for the final count at Buchenwald or the specifics of a brand-new bridge.

--children's television host Fred Rogers

Learn to say, “No,” and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.

--preacher Charles H. Spurgeon

While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize—sometimes with astonishment—how happy we had been.

--writer Nikos Kazantzakis

Calvin: I'm a genius. But I'm a misunderstood genius.

Hobbes: What's misunderstood about you?

Calvin: Nobody thinks I'm a genius.

--cartoonist Bill Watterson from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes

If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous whack.

--British prime minister Winston Churchill

We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing—an actor, a writer—I am a person who does things—I write, I act—and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.

--actor Stephen Fry

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

--writer/director Woody Allen