As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

To survive, you must tell stories.

But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Worry is most often a prideful way of thinking that you have more control over life and its circumstances than you actually do.

Mission creep is not unique to Congress. It is endemic to all arms of the federal government.

Another chapter closes before it has the chance to begin

Every time you go to the doctor and get a good report, the odds keep staking more in your favour.

Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.

Children's stories force logic upon the gruesome facts of our lives. They mirror our troubles and submit them to a chain of causality.

The mind is only a bundle of thoughts. The thoughts have their root in the I-thought. Whoever investigates the True "I" enjoys the stillness of bliss.

A great idea is not enough.

There is such sweet pain in parting that I could hang forever on thine arms, and look away my life into thine eyes.

To lead others out of darkness, let them see your light.