Abraham Lincoln

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. 

Maria Sanford

"...vehement and gusty, leonine, hale, and lusty." 

Maria Sanford was an educator born in 1836. She became one of the first female college professors in the country when she accepted a professorship of history at Swarthmore in 1871, though she migrated to the University of Minnesota in 1880. Sanford was the first woman to deliver a commencement speech at a university and was a frequent public speaker at a time when it was considered inappropriate for women to speak in public. She was known for her ability to project her voice to the back of any room. On her eightieth birthday, the University of Minnesota held an event to celebrate her long career, and someone recited a speech that described her with the phrase above. What a woman! 

Charles Darwin

It creates a feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose.

--From his diary account of his trip to South America

Marie Ebner von Eschenbach

We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for. 

Gustave Flaubert

Language is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.