Frivolity is inborn, conceit acquired by education.

Politicians are not born; they are excreted.

Poor is the nation that has no heroes, but poorer still is the nation that having heroes, fails to remember and honor them.

It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.

Read at every wait; read at all hours; read within leisure; read in times of labor; read as one goes in; read as one goest out. The task of the educated mind is simply put: read to lead.

We learn nothing from history except that we learn nothing from history.

It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

The utility of adversity is to draw inspiration, wisdom and strength from it.

Spend more time with people who bring out the best in you.

The country is the world of the soul, the city is the world of bodies.

My first job was a Greek tragedy, and ever since, one job just seemed to roll onto the next. I've been terribly lucky.

Once you have courage to look upon evil, seeing it for what it is and naming it by its true name, it is powerless against you, and you can destroy it.

You really need to love something or someone in order to work hard enough to be very successful. You have to believe in something and have a certain optimism.

I've always been quite a happy person, but when I'm low, I'm pretty darn low.

We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free.

What did my arms do before they held you?

A good book is like a seed: it produces fruit that has in it seed for more fruit. It is not a picture on the wall; it is a window that invies us to wider horizons.