From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours.

I have made this letter longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal, Lettres provincia

Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.

Margaret Thatcher

Put a bridle on thy tongue set a guard before thy lips, lest the words of thine own mouth destroy thy peace... on much speaking cometh repentance, but in silence is safety.

William Drummond

I'm very jealous of my daughter's education. She's been inspired by her teachers, and nobody inspired me as a teenager.

Jenny Eclair

January gray is here, like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, march with grief doth howl and rave, and April weeps -- but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

No battle of any importance can be won without enthusiasm.

John Lord O'Brian

A man must earnestly want.

William Frederick Book

If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.

Anthony Burgess

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel.

Elizabeth Arden

This aesthetic quality, then, is what politics is all about. It's authenticity that separates winners from losers, good politics from bad, and he-man leader-types from consultant-directed puppet-boys.

Thomas Frank

Whatever my individual desires were to be free, I was not alone. There were many others who felt the same way.

Rosa Parks

I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.

Jackson Pollock