Nature abhors annihilation.

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.

For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live.

All people are endowed with the faculty of compassion, and for this reason can develop the humanitarian spirit.

Did you hear something, Nora?” Vee asked. “I thought I heard something.” “You definitely heard something,” I agreed. “Could that be … a dog fart I heard?” Vee asked me.

So I think that we're in a very heightened and somewhat unusual period of politics and polling around the countries that New Zealanders take close interest in.

Most of the gaffes I've made have not been funny - they've been stupid.

I shall be the first composer in history not to have a biography.

Rickey got a big ranch. Rickey got a big bull. Rickey got horses. Rickey got chickens and everything. And Rickey got a 20-gallon hat.

When you abandon making choices, you enter the vast world of excuses.