In order to succeed in a profession, a person not only needs to have its good, but also its bad qualities. The former are the spirit, the latter is the body of the job.

I look around me and nowhere do I see a stamp of disapproval with which nature marked a woman's candid brow.

Genius unrefined resembles a flash of lightning, but wisdom is like the sun.

The uneducated person perceives only the individual phenomenon, the partly educated person the rule, and the educated person the exception.

History is the zoology of the human race.

I love the pride whose measure is its own eminence and not the insignificance of someone else.

The character of the crowds is made up of mimicry and hostility.

Drink and be thankful to the host! What seems insignificant when you have it, is important when you need it.

Someone who is reluctant to say what he needs to say, often ends up doing so with an insolence whose crassness is proportionate tohis fear, once he gathers the necessary courage.

Piety is the fermentation of the forming mind and the putrefaction of the disintegrating one.

A woman's passion is not the measure of a man's love.

Of all animals, the cat alone attains to the comtemplative life. He regards the wheel of existence from without, like the Buddha.

There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done.

We all have that desire for something special, something committed. We all want to be The One.

I think it is just stupid economics for a government to approach economic management from a strand of thinking regarding unions as enemies.

No matter how bad things get, you can still walk away.

My parents never condescended to me. As a child, I always sat at the head of our dinner table. I was always given a lot of responsibility.

To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

Any librarian or scholar will tell you: Close is not the same as accurate.

He [Pierre Teilhard de Chardin] was thrilled with the idea that through work in the world human beings were participating in the ongoing extension and consecration of God's creation.