To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.

A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.

I am, as I am; whether hideous, or handsome, depends upon who is made judge.

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.

Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.

Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.

Meditation and water are wedded for ever.

I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.

Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up.

War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.

He stopped complaining, but now I was annoyed. I went to the roof and drank alone.

In any society built on institutionalized racism, race-mixing doesn't merely challenge the system as unjust, it reveals the system as unsustainable and incoherent.

I do a real analysis of who actually owns things - it’s the British…the Dutch…then it’s the Arabs…then it’s the French…then it’s the Jews…and then, on down the line.

I have as much chance of becoming Prime Minister as of being decapitated by a frisbee or of finding Elvis.

Our past is a novel that we are constantly revising.

Aid can work where there is good governance, and usually fails where governments are unable or unwilling to commit aid to improve the lives of their people.

The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought.

Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.

The disciplinary power that inscribes femininity in the female body is everywhere and it is nowhere; the disciplinarian is everyone and yet no one in particular.