The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.

Bernard Baruch

We construct a narrative for ourselves, and that's the thread that we follow from one day to the next. People who disintegrate as personalities are the ones who lose that thread.

Paul Auster

...because it is the privilige and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.

Salman Rushdie

There are only really a few stories to tell in the end, and betrayal and the failure of love is one of those good stories to tell.

Sean Lennon

Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

Eugene O'Neill

In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign. Secondly, a just cause. Thirdly, a rightful intention.

Thomas Aquinas

The more specific idea of Evolution now reached is -- a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.

Herbert Spencer

The pyramids, attached with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.

Richard Buckminster Fuller

I paint things as they are. I don't comment. I record.

Henri De Toulouse Lautrec

Love and esteem are the first principles of friendship it is always imperfect if either of these two are wanting.

Eustace Budgell

A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not be done.

Marge Piercy

My mom didn't want me to go to college. She didn't want me to read - when I read, I may as well have been holding a pineapple.

Lynda Barry