“The bard, the warrior, and the sage,
What win they but one lying page,
Where deeds and words, at hazard thrown,
May be or may not be their own?”

“This was the truest warrior
That ever buckled sword;
This the most gifted poet
That ever breathed a word;
And never earth’s philosopher
Traced with his golden pen
On the deathless page truths half so sage
As he wrote down for men.”

Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–1895) British hymn-writer and poet

“At first, all is black and white.
Black on white.
That's where I'm walking, through pages.
These pages.
Sometimes it gets so that I have one foot in the pages and the words, and the other in what they speak of.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

“May the tree of our life be firmly rooted in the soil of love. Let good deeds be the leaves on that tree; May words of kindness form its flowers; May peace be its fruit. Let us grow and unfold as one family, united in love.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

“O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed.”

John Keats Sleep and Poetry

“Yet you must not cling to the words of the old sages either; they, too, may not be right. Even if you believe them, you should be alert so that, in the event that something superior comes along, you may follow that.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

“That's what I told myself five hundred times: impossibility. I can tell you this much: the word is a great big log thrown on the fires of love. ~Page 133.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

“Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we're only what we've done and what we are going to do.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

“Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, "Why do you not practice what you preach?"”
Non confundant opera tua sermonem tuum: ne cum in Ecclesia loqueris, tacitus quilibet respondeat, cur ergo haec quae dicis, ipse non facis?

Jerome (345–420) Catholic saint and Doctor of the Church

“Time may restore us in his course
Goethe’s sage mind and Byron’s force;
But where will Europe’s latter hour
Again find Wordsworth’s healing power?”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools