History is only time furnished with dates and rich with events.

The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.

Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.

It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit.

Of every ten persons who talk about you, nine will say something bad, and the tenth will say something good in a bad way.

The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes a Titus or Marc Aurelius; the people is often Nero, but never Marc Aurelius.

To lose one's self in reverie, one must be either very happy, or very unhappy. Reverie is the child of extremes.

Gold like the sun, which melts wax, but hardens clay, expands great souls.

The only thing wealth does for some people is to make them worry about losing it.

The modest man has everything to gain, and the arrogant man everything to lose; for modesty has always to deal with generosity, and arrogance with envy.

Opinions, theories, and systems pass by turns over the grindstone of time, which at first gives them brilliancy and sharpness, but finally wears them out.

It isn't the amount you spend today, it's what you want to invest in for the future!

I’d rather spend the rest of my life without ever seeing you again, ” he says, “than watch them destroy you because of me.

Only few people enjoy life in better way rest of the made just to facilitate those few.

I sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the end of my pencil.

We are a nation that shouts at a microwave oven to hurry up.

The intelligence community was absolutely uniform and uniformly wrong about the existence of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq).

It is madness for any country to build its policy with an eye to nuclear war.

Progress is always the product of fresh thinking, and much of it thinking which to practical men bears the semblance of dreaming.

Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.

If you get into introspective blues or something where you're stretching out a bit, large audiences don't respond to this, so you have to give them what they want, basically.