Travel, like dreams, is a door that opens from the real world into a world that is yet to be discovered

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

The past attracts me, the present frightens me, because the future is death.

A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.

Of all the passions, the only one that seems respectable to me is the passion for food

It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.

We cannot exist without water.

The more we idealized the past, however, and refuse to acknowledge or childhood sufferings, the more we pass them on unconsciously to the next generation.

To model our political system upon speculations of lasting tranquility, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.

To paraphrase the Bible, what shall it profit a man (or a woman) who gains the whole world but loses his or her own family?

I have developed a Zen-like approach to the operating systems that people use: 'When you're ready, the right operating system will appear in your life.

There's a lot of money to be made by taking women seriously, and letting them know you're taking them seriously.

If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet that there would be no suicide bombers.

He's (Willie Stargell) such a big strong guy he should love that porch. He's got power enough to hit home runs in any park, including Yellowstone.

Women never reason, and therefore they are (comparatively) seldom wrong.