Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

William Shakespeare

The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.

George Orwell

No matter how good you get, there's always something further out there.

Bill Walton

The shortest way out of Manchester is notoriously a bottle of Gordon's gin; out of any businessman's life there is the mirage of Paris; out of Paris, or mediocrity of talent and imagination, there are all the drugs, from subtle, all-conquering opium to cheating, cozening cocaine.

William Bolitho

Laws are often made by fools, and even more often by men who fail in equity because they hate equality: but always by men, vain authorities who can resolve nothing.

Michel de Montaigne

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

G. K. Chesterton

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

Gore Vidal

To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word. It is to be feared, however, that if the word is avoided the confusions of thought with which it has been associated may persist.

Bertrand Russell

A wise man knows when to stay silent. However, a wiser man of faith knows that sometimes words can win the battle when all odds stand against you.

Shannon L. Alder

He who boasts of his descent, praises the deed of another.

Seneca (Seneca the Elder)

There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they? Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of: on the contrary, they have probably many points of attraction; but they have one that neutralizes all these --they care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach; and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind; but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society as in a solitude.

William Hazlitt