I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism.

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

To read means to borrow; to create out of one s readings is paying off one's debts.

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

He who understands the wise is wise already.

So, the darkness hid the little girl in herself, to protect her from the wolves with the human mask on their faces.

Creativity is the mother of invention.

Blessed is the man who having nothing to say abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences.

You aren't just voting for the president. So many issues that affect your everyday life are decided locally on that ballot as well. So go get that god damn sticker. Your country needs you.

Take every gain without showing remorse about missed profits, because an eel may escape sooner than you think.

All novelists write in a different way, but I always write in longhand and then do two versions of typescript on a computer.

We don't have to do it any better than we can - ever. Do our best for the moment, then let it go. If we have to redo it, we can do our best in another moment, later.

No one ever really pays for betrayal in silver....The price of any betrayal always comes due in flesh.

We will compromise and compromise and compromise but we will never be compromised.