I have always considered David Hume as approaching as nearly the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will allow.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.

What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?

A nation is not made wealthy by the childish accumulation of shiny metals, but it enriched by the economic prosperity of it's people.

Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another.

On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

choose your words well(be honest, be true)butabove all else, be kind

Any romantic feelings for a 12-year-old are like entering into a fantasy world.

I studied harmony and composition in a very spontaneous manner.

Magnus shrugged. "He also made inappropriate amorous advances to a startled grandmotherly sort selling flowers, an Irish wolfhound, and innocent hat stand in a dwelling he broke into, and myself.

Vision encompasses vast vistas outside the realm of the predictable, the safe, the expected.

Obviously all writers, all artists, have their own internal critics; as they write they are being self-critical.

If we had not been dealing with the devil in person, we could have saved Algeria.

If the noun is good and the verb is strong, you almost never need an adjective.

Wary, as if surrounded by strangers.

Being alive is about playing to win. Being brain dead is when you play not to loose.