A letter does not blush.

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.

As the sun rose I could see Etna, a truncated cone with a plume of smoke over it like the quill of a pen stuck in a pewter inkpot, rising out of the haze to the north of where I was treading water.

A source of innocent merriment! Of innocent merriment.

I'll habits gather by unseen degrees As brooks make rivers rivers run to seas.

The devil loves 'curing' a small fault by giving you a great one.

I don't have any well-developed philosophy about journalism. Ultimately it is important in a society like this, so people can know about everything that goes wrong.

Early in my term I will also be requesting that all NATO nations promptly pay their bills, which many are not now doing.

Doing something purely for one's own enjoyment is fine, but, I must admit, finding that others enjoy it as well has a certain power over the corners of my mouth.

It's rather hard to decide just when people are grown up.

If this was the last day of your life, would you spend it the way you're spending today?

Behold a contest worthy of a god, a brave man matched in conflict with adversity.