The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
John Steinbeck

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
James A. Baldwin

There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.
Albert Ellis

My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.
Woodrow Wilson

When I am cast in a movie where I feel that the woman's part is more interesting, I usually start thinking about Spencer Tracy and Fred Astaire. They seem to be the most clear actors when working with women.
Jack Nicholson

Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.
Saint Thomas Aquinas

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm.
Florence Nightingale

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.
Dave Barry

What may seem depressing or even tragic to one person may seem like an absolute scream to another person, especially if he has had between four and seven beers.
Dave Barry

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense... that gold and economic freedom are inseparable.
Alan Greenspan

I once heard two ladies going on and on about the pains of childbirth and how men don't seem to know what real pain is. I asked if either of them ever got themselves caught in a zipper.
Emo Philips

Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
Emo Philips

I seem to smell the stench of appeasement in the air.
Margaret Thatcher

I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible.
Saint Teresa

The Pentagon still has not given a name to the Iraqi war. Somehow 'Operation Re-elect Bush' doesn't seem to be popular.
Jay Leno

I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.
Walter Cronkite

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.
Lyndon B. Johnson

A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.
William Butler Yeats

How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
William Butler Yeats