Present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.

Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

New friends can often have a better time together than old friends.

Ourselves are to ourselves the cause of ill.

While I have questions about the language used in describing the two economic systems, I think people have fairly good gut sense of the difference between socialism and capitalism.

We need an independent media to hold people like me to account.

I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian.

Nuclear weapons are to be worried about only when they're in the hands of Ronald Reagan - not so much when they're in the hands of a Third World anti-imperialist like Saddam Hussein. Can't you see?

He who is and remains true to himself and to others has the most attractive quality of the greatest talent.

In my most painful moments on the bike, I am at my most curious and I wonder each and every time how I will respond.

If a community decides that some conduct is prejudicial to itself, and so decides by numbers sufficient to impose its will upon dissenters, I know of no principle which can stay its hand.

When he saw injustice, he wanted to do away with it. He saw communism, and he wanted to put an end to it.