Friends are proved by adversity.

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.

Reading as an adult, for pleasure, is infinitely better than reading the stuff assigned to you back in school. You get to choose what you want to read.

What I remember when I started to write was how I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to get to my characters.

What makes you a Christian is whether or not you really are in accord with biblical theology and whether you know Jesus Christ as your Saviour.

I don't like authority, at least I don't like other people's authority.

It is more often from pride than from defective understanding that people oppose established opinions: they find the best places taken in the good party and are reluctant to accept inferior ones.

They tell you to be careful because maybe you don't want to meet your heroes. I've met pretty much every one, and I've never been let down.

And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear.

Certainly the people who are close to me are happier. They feel freer.

You'll find individuals agreeing on this, but when they get into collective societies and larger groups they find it difficult to achieve group agreement.

I had enough trouble not falling down when the ground was dry; it might be safer for me to go back to bed now.