Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.

If the euro zone doesn't come up with a comprehensive vision of its own future, you'll have a whole range of nationalist, xenophobic and extreme movements increasing across the European Union. And, frankly, questions about the British debate on EU membership will just be a small sideshow compared to the rise of political populism.

Nick Clegg

We are alike in many ways, you and I. There is a darkness in us. Darkness, pain, death. They radiate from us. If ever you love a woman, Rand, leave her and let her find another. It will be the best gift you can give her.

Robert Jordan

I am reminded of the professor who, in his declining hours, was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, 'Verify your quotations.'

Sir Winston Churchill, quoted in

Whatever is beautiful is beautiful by necessity.

Pindar

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

E'er since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supplyRedeeming love has been my themeAnd shall be till I die

C. H. (Charles Haddon) Spurgeon

You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Loss and possession, Death and life are one. There falls no shadow where There shines no sun.

Hilaire Belloc

Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

Henry Ward Beecher

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,Rough-hew them how we will.

William Shakespeare

There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

John Swinton, a toast before the

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

Corrie Ten Boom