Bursting through the door, the flustered mother hollered uncontrollably at the innocent teacher who gave her child an F.

“As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash." -- To Kill A Mockingbird

"Screw your courage to the sticking-place,

And we'll not fail."

- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1.7

The search is underway for those who were behind these evil acts. I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them. -- George W. Bush, "9/11 Speech"

"I regret deeply any injuries that may have been done in the course of the events that led to this decision. I would say only that if some of my Judgments were wrong, and some were wrong, they were made in what I believed at the time to be the best interest of the Nation." -- Richard Nixon, Resignation Speech

"...we register the world's stimuli in logarithmic rather than linear increments. For example, if you increase the energy of a sound's volume by a factor of 10, your ears will judge this change to be rather small. Increase it by a factor of 2 and you will barely notice." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson, "Coming to Our Senses"

"But if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils and my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the 11th day of this month, I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can to take to disregard the provisions of the Salt laws," -- M.K. Gandhi, "Letter to Viceroy, Lord Irwin"

"Yonatan had a brilliant idea for a documentary. He'd knock on doors. Just him. No camera crew, no nonsense. Just Yonatan, on his own, a small camera in hand asking, "If you found a talking goldfish that granted you three wishes, what would you wish for?"

She shrugged helplessly. “But surely you are aware of the fact that we haven’t had a bathing

suit in stock since the first of June. Our – no offense – White Elephant sale was June third

and we unload – rather, disposed of all of our suits at that time.”

— Erma Bombeck, At Wit’s End

"It’s his first exposure to Third World passion. He thought only Americans had informed political opinion – other people staged coups out of spite and misery. It’s an unwelcome revelation to him that a reasonably educated and rational man like Ro would die for things that he, Brent, has never heard of and would rather laugh about," -- Bharati Mukherjee, "Orbiting"

"To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference," -- Joan Didion

"...but this oligarchy of sex, which makes fathers, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household -- which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carriers dissension, discord, and rebellion into every home of the nation." -- Susan B. Anthony, "On Women's Right to Vote"

"I am glad to help just so long as it is kept very private. You can have your staff or whomever call me anytime today, tonight or tomorrow. I was nominated this coming year one of America's Ten Most Outstanding Young Man. That will be in January 18 in my home town of Memphis, Tennessee. I am sending you a short autobiography about myself so you can better understand this approach. I would love to meet you just to say hello if you're not too busy," -- Letter from Elvis Presley to President Nixon

"With no object of sufficient importance to occupy my attention here I am left to feel all the weight of our separation. I pass a great part of my time in company but my dissipations are a very imperfect suspension of my uneasiness. I was cherishing the melancholy pleasure of thinking of the sweets I had left behind and was so long to be deprived of, when a servant from Head Quarters presented me with your letters. I feasted for some time on the sweet effusions of tenderness they contained, and my heart returned every sensation of yours," -- Letter from Alexander Hamilton to Eliza Hamilton

Are you trying to give these people something they might enjoy, or are you trying to do the proper thing by them? Books, at best, are only read, but useless, monogrammed silver objects that cannot be returned serve to remind one of the occasion of their presentation every time one sees them tarnishing away, unused. Cuff links and bracelets are all right, since everyone has too many of them, but silver golf tees or toothpaste tube squeezers are ideal. -- Answer from a Miss Manners column

"No prayers were said over his tomb. No candle lit in his memory. His last word had been my name. He had called out to me and I had not answered. I did not weep, and it pained me that I could not weep. But I was out of tears. And deep inside me, if I could have searched the recesses of my feeble conscience, I might have found something like Free at last!.." -- From Night by Elie Wiesel

"It was a window enchanted by the rarity with which I looked from it. Its panes were strewn with drops that as if by amoebic decision would abruptly merge and break and jerkily run downward, and the window screen, like a sampler half-stitched, or a crossword puzzle invisibly solved, was inlaid erratically with minute, translucent tesserae of rain." -- (John Updike, Of the Farm, 1965)

“And I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.”

― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“They parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.”

― Jane Austen