The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

The complex develops out of the simple.

Being very famous is not the fun it sounds. It merely means you're being chased by a lot of people and you lose your privacy.

Criminals interest me, because they're driven by the same desires as we are, but they take these disastrous shortcuts and end up in a real mess.

I'm basically a writer of ideas, and the English aren't interested in ideas. The English, I'm afraid, are totally brainless.

I've always been a pretty hard worker. That's how I've written over a hundred books.

If I'd stayed on in London and carried on going to literary parties, it would have wrecked me as a writer.

If you asked me what is the basis of all my work, it's the feeling there's something basically wrong with human beings.

What I wanted to do was to try to create a philosophy upon a completely new foundation.

When I was a teenager I was a total romantic escapist. My world was books.

Whereas in the past optimism had been regarded as rather shallow - because 'oh well, it's just your temperament, you happen to be just a cheerful sort of person' - what I wanted to do was to establish that in fact it is the pessimists who are allowing all kinds of errors to creep into their work.

Imagination should be used not to escape reality but to create it.

The exploration of oneself is usually also an exploration of the world at large of other writers a process of comparison with oneself with others discoveries of kinships gradual illumination of ones own potentialities.

The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

Are you kidding? I'm a terrible cook, but John is a really great one. Literally, I never cook. The whole time we were dating, I prepared two officially romantic meals. Both of them were such disasters that he begs me never to go into the kitchen again.

There was a tsunami and there are terrible natural disasters, all of this because of too little Torah study.

We must expect reverses, even defeats. They are sent to teach us wisdom and prudence, to call forth greater energies, and to prevent our falling into greater disasters.

The miserable failures of capitalist economies in the Great Depression were root causes of worldwide social and political disasters.

Did you know that the word "tsunami," which is now being used worldwide, is a Japanese word? This is indicative of the extent to which Japan has been subject to frequent tsunami disasters in the past.

Farms and ranches contend with much more than quarterly reports and profit margins - the weather can wreak havoc on their quality of life and economic viability. When natural disasters strike, we must do all we can to assist the backbone of our economy.

It's very difficult to ignore humanitarian disasters. The royalties from my albums continue to support my charity work.

These days, it's really been uninteresting except when disasters occur.

The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

Our agricultural economy in the Hudson Valley continues to face historically low prices and producer income, as well as losses due to weather and other disasters.

The environmental movement, like all political processes, reacts best to disasters. But these are very slow, very gradual disasters in the making.

I tell you, the difference for me is between being victimized, terrorized, numbed by reading about different disasters, or reducing the anxiety by getting up and doing something about it, at whatever level.

We had had several mine disasters where workers, some of the workers were rescued. It was, you know, who was lucky and who weren't. Some would find the air pockets But, in this one, bam, it was just, everybody was gone and it greatly depressed the state.

But I warn my colleagues that we will fail in our efforts to protect the homeland if we do not take additional steps to avoid a trade-off between protecting ourselves against terrorists attacks and preparing for and responding to natural disasters.

There is a huge responsibility on all of us to get England through. It would be one of the biggest disasters in sports history if we blew it and we must make sure it does not happen.

In a world full of competing emergencies and disasters, it really helps if there is an international locomotive that can help us bring attention - help us bring resources.

People who live through transplants or disasters like Sept. 11 are survivors.

Global interdependence today means that economic disasters in developing countries could create a backlash on developed countries.

Getting into the habit of switching a timer on will, I promise, save you from any number of kitchen disasters.

There is a growing feeling that perhaps Texas is really another country, a place where the skies, the disasters, the diamonds, the politicians, the women, the fortunes, the football players and the murders are all bigger than anywhere else.

Mr. Speaker, from hurricanes and floods in Latin America to earthquakes in Asia, natural disasters are increasingly becoming a regular feature of life for large numbers of people around the globe.

There also is the plight that comes from natural disasters; these natural disasters could be alleviated or dealt with; we only need some time to do it.

The biggest stories in 2005 were the national disasters.

My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.

Crime is only the worst example, but it is a paradigm for other Labour policy disasters. No one tells the voters that crime is falling: let them stay scared senseless.

My heart goes out to victims and survivors of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and to their families. This disaster will go down in history books as one of the largest natural disasters in U.S. history.

The great secret of a successful marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters.

But by showing us live coverage of every bad thing happening everywhere in the world, cable news makes life seem like it's just an endless string of disasters - when, for most people in most places today, life is fairly good.

The garden is growth and change and that means loss as well as constant new treasures to make up for a few disasters.

As Mayor of San Francisco, I will work hard to ensure that, in the event of natural or man-made disasters, San Franciscans are prepared and our City is protected.

I've produced more pilots than United Airlines, and they've all been disasters. Every audition I ever took in my life I lost.

The beef industry has contributed to more American deaths than all the wars of this century, all natural disasters, and all automobile accidents combined.