“This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?”

“Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer

“Scientists have invented a new strain of cannabis without the high. They celebrated with non-alcoholic beer and furious dry-humping.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

“But now here is the director's cut, which is 20 minutes shorter, lops off a couple of characters and a few of the infinite subplots, and is even more of a mess. I recommend that Kelly keep right on cutting until he whittles it down to a ukulele pick.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

“Many of the insights of the saint stem from his experience as a sinner.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

“The resurrection state is the culmination of glorified humanity; is the change of the earthly for the heavenly; is the putting off of flesh and blood, and the putting on of the spiritual body. The body of the resurrection is the body with which the spirit is clothed for its celestial life.”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

“Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

“Few things in life can be so appalling as the difference between a dry antiseptic statement of a principle by a well spoken man in a quiet office, and what happens to people when that principle is put into practice.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

“My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“I love the fair lilies and roses so gay,
They are rich in their pride and their splendor;
But still more do I love to wander away
To the meadow so sweet,
Where down at my feet,
The harebell blooms modest and tender.”

Dora Read Goodale (1866–1953) U.S. poet