Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all.

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.

A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.

Of all the passions, the only one that seems respectable to me is the passion for food

It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

Maturity means being able to tolerate, on all sorts of planes, uncertainty and not knowing.

We as central bankers need not be concerned if a collapsing financial asset bubble does not threaten to impair the real economy, its production, jobs and price stability.

Silver and gold are not the only coin; virtue too passes current all over the world.

A good marriage isn't something you find; it's something you make.

To every problem there is already a solution, whether you know it or not. To every sum in there is already a correct answer, whether the mathematician has found it or not.

Many things happened in the sixties, but the period is no more significant, better, or more 'political' than today. It's time to turn the page.

From men motivated by moral certitude, history teaches, no lasting good ever comes.

I'm undisputed and there's no disputing that.

Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession.

I was drinking a lot of bourbon. I was miserable. I was starting to get work, but it wasn't remotely satisfying. It was garbage compared to the theater I was doing.