For a courageous man cannot die dishonorably, a man who has attained the consulship cannot die before his time, a philosopher cannot die wretchedly.

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.

At the dawn of light, darkness disappears.

And no one will listen to us until we listen to ourselves.

People. Products. Profits. In that order.

I am a failure as a writer. The publishers won't publish me, the bookshops won't carry my books, the critics won't write about me. I am excluded from all anthologies, and completely ignored.

An old stomach reforms more whiskey drinkers than a new resolve.

When we look in the mirror, the one thing we don't want to see is an ordinary human being.

I just don't think that a lot of the time the messages we send kids prepare them for real life.

Almost all human who can form a sentence will eventually let you in on the fact that their lives are very difficult and sometimes very hard to manage.

No writer should minimize the factor that affects everyone, but is beyond control: luck.

I can get no remedy against this consumption of the purse: borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, but the disease is incurable.