If the soul has food for study and learning, nothing is more delightful than an old age of leisure.

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.

It's difficult to cope with the infinite variety of the past, and so we apply filters and settle on a few famous names.

It is the absence of hope, which equals the despair that is the punishment.

Chicago happened slowly, like a migraine. First they were driving through countryside, then, imperceptibly, the occasional town became a low suburban sprawl, and the sprawl became the city.

I have so much confidence in the reality of Jesus that I feel no pressure to try to make people act or be a certain way. I'm banking everything on the fact that God actually changes people.

That's all I want- to do no harm.

As good as Miami is, we'd rather go to Miami.

Decide which you want to play up: your clothing or your jewelry, but not both. Let one be the star and one the supporting player.

How did the atheist get his idea of that God whom he denies?

Even as a dope fiend mama. You always was a black queen mama.

I made a pact with my three-year-old thumb-sucking daughter that if she stopped sucking her thumb, I would stop sucking my pipe.