Where are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past?

Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him.

But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.

And habits are hell's own substitute for good intentions. Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative , of imagination. They're the curse of marriage and the after-bane of death.

I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.

After I convinced them that I was a harmless novelist, I actually got them to give me a tour of the harem - which is usually off limits for tourists.

Look up . . . and see them. The teaching stars, beyond worship and commonplace tongues.

So she was on her own, Kate thought, and instilled all the friendly helpfulness she could into her next question. “Excuse me, but are you the bad company young Mr. Scott has got into?

He regards boredom, I observe, as the One and Mighty Enemy of his soul. And will succeed in conquering it, I am sure—if he survives the experience.

But it's also because of something personal. My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here.

Facts are the soil from which the story grows. Imagination is a last resort.

Ambition is not what a man would do, but what a man does, for ambition without action is fantasy.

If you put enough smart people together in one space, good things happen.

I have never been shy about listening to the input of others and weighing it seriously.

Cleverness, after all, has its limitations. Its mechanical judgments and clever remarks tend to prove inaccurate with passing time, because it doesn't look very deeply into things to begin with.

Managers today have to do more with less, and get better results from limited resources, more than ever before.

So then you have to say to yourself: Do I want to be rich, or do I want to do good work?

God is not naïve in the giving of His laws; He anticipates our disobedience even as He commands our obedience.

I have to be an optimist and say that it might get better.

The needs of others are ever present, and each of us can do something to help someone.... Unless we lose ourselves in service to others, there is little purpose to our own lives.

The more uncompromisingly specific you are the more you end up touching the bigger universal truths.