Therefore when I considered this carefully the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.

Comedy is defiance. It's a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it's the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale.

Only the contemptible fear contempt.

In approaching our subject it will be best without attempting to shorten the path by referring to famous theories of the drama to start directly from the facts and to collect from them gradually an idea of Shakespearean Tragedy.

When you see a fantastic colour or cut in a magazine perched up on some famous so-and-so's head it's tempting to ask your stylist for the same but do not be fooled. The hair in those fancy photos can be very high maintenance.

It is no longer an unwritten law of American capitalism that industry will attempt to maintain wages at a level that allows a single wage to support a family.

The attempt to redefine the family as a purely voluntary arrangement grows out of the modern delusion that people can keep all their options open all the time.

That bedrock faith that I could write was what blinded me to attempts to discourage me.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature the texts our first attempt at cosmology making sense of where we are in the universe our first attempt at health care believing in faith healing our first attempt at philosophy.

When I was about 15... I made my first attempt as a leading lady and was of course a complete failure.

This attempt to isolate cell constituents might have been a failure if they had been destroyed by the relative brutality of the technique employed. But this did not happen.

America thinks of itself as a meritocracy so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.

Feminism is doomed to failure because it is based on an attempt to repeal and restructure human nature.

Every book I've written has been a different attempt to understand something and the success or failure of the previous one is irrelevant. I write the book I want.

Is anarchism possible? The failure of attempts to attain freedom does not mean the cause is lost.

Attempt something so impossible that unless God is in it it's doomed to failure.

The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success.

Myth is an attempt to narrate a whole human experience of which the purpose is too deep going too deep in the blood and soul for mental explanation or description.

Let's remember the children who come from broken homes surrounded by crime drugs temptation their peers having babies out of wedlock but who still manage to get a good education despite the many obstacles they face every day.

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.

I am persuaded that if any attempt is made to improve the education of the poor and such an unmanly spirit should guide the resolution of a society or committee for that purpose it would render the design abortive.

As the fly bangs against the window attempting freedom while the door stands open so we bang against death ignoring heaven.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death and to deny one is to deny the other.

There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death. Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behavior.