In every society in human history including the United States those in power seek to imbue themselves with the attributes of religion and patriotism as a way of getting greater support for their policy and insulating themselves from any criticism.

The aspects of patriotism that hush dissent encourage going along and sanction comfortable distancing and compliance with what is indecent and unacceptable... those aspects are too fundamental to ignore or gloss over.

There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people.

Tolerance compromise understanding acceptance patience - I want those all to be very sharp tools in my shed.

The strong manly ones in life are those who understand the meaning of the word patience.

I've worked so hard to eliminate the inner geek from my life. I suddenly realize I have no patience for those people who still have their geeks showing. Now I see why being 'normal' has been so important to me.

Only those who have patience to do simple things perfectly ever acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.

As for goals I don't set myself those anymore. I'm not one of these 'I must have achieved this and that by next year' kind of writers. I take things as they come and find that patience and persistence tend to win out in the end.

I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.

I'm a parent especially when you've had the intense parenting the way I had. It's all in the bank. It's all in the great experience bank. Those are your secrets. That's the stuff that makes your work rich that's what you dip into.

There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.

Since those who believe they need a hero/celebrity outnumber the actual heroes/celebrities people feel safe and comfortably justified in numbers committing egregious crimes in the name of the greater social ego. Ironically diminishing their own true hero-celebrity nature in the process.

When I get recognized for 'Twilight ' it's usually a teenage girl and they're usually really loud. So it certainly feels like I get recognized the most from that but it could just be because of the nature of how vocal those fans are.

I believe the accepted model of capitalism that demands endless growth deserves the blame for the destruction of nature and it should be displaced. Failing that I try to work with those companies and help them change the way they think about our resources.

Those who made and endorsed our Constitution knew man's nature and it is to their ideas rather than to the temptations of utopia that we must ask that our judges adhere.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.

Those things that nature denied to human sight she revealed to the eyes of the soul.

The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise are good nature truth good sense and good breeding.

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations that a young person who either marries or dies is sure of being kindly spoken of.

It seems to be a law of nature inflexible and inexorable that those who will not risk cannot win.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits by which we are nurtured and live.

A rude nature is worse than a brute nature by so much more as man is better than a beast: and those that are of civil natures and genteel dispositions are as much nearer to celestial creatures as those that are rude and cruel are to devils.

As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature I can partly soften or subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of others.