To know how to dissemble is the knowledge of kings. [Fr., Savoir dissimuler est le savoir des rois.]

Friendship is the medicine for all misfortune; but ingratitude dries up the fountain of all goodness.

Reason must be the universal rule and guide; all things must be done according to reason without allowing oneself to be swayed by emotion.

Had Luther and Calvin been confined before they had begun to dogmatize, the states would have been spared many troubles.

First, all means to conciliate; failing that, all means to crush.

A single word has sometimes lost or won an empire.

If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good?

Nothing so upholds the laws as the punishment of persons whose rank is as great as their crime.

Give me six lines written by the most honorable person alive, and I shall find enough in them to condemn them to the gallows.

Deception is the knowledge of kings.

Never write a letter and never destroy one.

I wanted a library like this...[] A cave of words that I'd made myself.

Current / is the cure for both a stopped heart / and one that beats too much. / And if it must be shocked twice, / the surgeons call it a reluctant heart.

I'm a Christian by choice.

I grew up in Stillwater, Minnesota in a proud Catholic family.

No siren did ever so charm the ear of the listener as the listening ear has charmed the soul of the siren.

It's my intention to make something stand outside the realm of album art, but it also feels comfortable to me to be in it. It's tricky and definitely a requires striking a delicate balance.

I am only serious about 20% of the time; one of the great joys of my life is the fact that I alone know when that is.

Obsession is a young man's game, and my only excuse is that I never grew old.

Evil people naturally assume that you will use that power exactly as they would use it.

Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.