You love a nothing when you love an ingrate.

As long as she is wise and good, a girl has sufficient dowry.

Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend.

I have taken a wife, I have sold my sovereignty for a dowry. [Lat., Uxorem accepi, dote imperium vendidi.]

Where there are friends there is wealth.

Spice a dish with love and it pleases every palate.

Good courage in a bad affair is half of the evil overcome.

Good merchandise, even hidden, soon finds buyers.

Things we do not expect, happen more frequently than we wish.

There's no such thing, you know, as picking out the best woman: it's only a question of comparative badness, brother.

Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.

It's unexpectedly painful to have become a pronoun.

The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your i

In the 40, 000 year time scale we're all the same people. We're all equally primitive, give or take two or three thousand years here or a hundred years there.

The poets think about war more than the social scientists.

When we meet with better fare than was expected, the disappointment is overlooked even by the unscrupulous. When we meet with worse than was expected, philosophers alone know how to make it better.

Politeness is better than logic. You can often persuade when you cannot convince.

I actually don't have a great surplus of ideas. Some evolve very slowly, over many years, but I sort of trust that all of the interesting ones will become something that I eventually end up doing.

I think it's artist's role to give and to receive and the people to give it, hear it, vibe on it, and give it back around again.

McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business; they've freed people from the shame of not reading. They've rationalized becoming stupid and watching television.

Our life is made up of time, and time is a gift from God, so it is important that it be used in good and fruitful actions.