Happiness is a quality of the soul...not a function of one's material circumstances.

I, however, place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.

Thomas Jefferson

The people who did the collateralized mortgage obligations, sold them to pension funds, then sold them short, then bought credit default swap insurance on them, are just amazing. They are a law unto themselves.

Ben Stein

I didn't see myself as the busty type. Too bad bodies are issued randomly, not selected to match your personality

Phoebe Kitanidis

Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry.

Rick Perry

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.

W. H. Auden

Since September 11, security has been increased everywhere, and we have new IDs to get on to the Fox lot. I drove to the security gate, but realized I'd left my ID in my other car. I just broke into that voice - 'Hey, man, I'm Bart Simpson. Who else sounds like this?' The guard waved me through.

Nancy Cartwright

The learned is happy, nature to explore The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

Alexander Pope

Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; that the form of government which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is no shame today. We're all getting so mean and small and petty and ridiculous, and we all live under the threat of extermination.

Norman Mailer

If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it.

Charlotte Bronte

I do not much dislike the matter, but the manner of his speech.

William Shakespeare

The joke is generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact.

G.K. Chesterton