A talent for repartee is one that increases with practice.

The history of the Franks becomes, therefore, the history of the Netherlands.

A third force, developing itself more slowly, becomes even more potent than the rest: the power of gold.

Monuments! what are they? the very pyramids have forgotten their builders, or to whom they were dedicated. Deeds, not stones, are the true monuments of the great.

In Gaul were two orders, the nobility and the priesthood, while the people, says Caesar, were all slaves.

The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs.

A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period.

Thus the whole country was broken into many shreds and patches of sovereignty.

A good lawyer is a bad Christian.

To the Calvinists, more than to any other class of men, the political liberties of Holland, England, and America are due.

Enthusiasm could not supply the place of experience.

Education shouldn’t be boring. It should stimulate the imagination and fill minds with the joy of knowing.

There is no guilt in feelings ever.

If someone comes to you with, 'It's my kid's graduation, ' you don't tell them, 'Sorry, you can't go to that.' You just don't do that. You figure out some other way.

Though debts are condemned in the financial world, the world of friendship and love may perversely depend on well-managed debts.

Fortunate persons hardly ever amend their ways: they always imagine that they are in the right when fortune upholds their bad conduct.

The Italian mafia, they're very [into] construction. They're in a whole different way of operating than they did back in the '20s.

I wish I could have skipped college.

I don't want anything to do with anything mechanical between me and the paper, including a typewriter, and I don't even want a fountain pen between me and the paper.

The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.

The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death.