To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention — on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God — that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. – W. H. Auden
To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time. – Cornelia Otis Skinner
If you wish in this world to advance your merits youre bound to enhance You must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet, Or, trust me, you havent a chance. – William Gilbert