Nathaniel Hawthorne

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.

If I can add, say, 10 great new violin concertos to the repertoire before I'm done, that will be truly exciting.