Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian -- ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.

Oscar Wilde

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.

Oscar Wilde

The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking. Immediately at the moment of perception, you can feel the mind going to work, sending the odor around from place to place, setting off complex repertories through the brain, polling one center after another for signs of re recognition, for old memories and old connection.

Lewis Thomas

Even when I'm sick and depressed, I love life.

Arthur Rubinstein

Most religions live from a narrative that shapes their relationship with the divine other, God or the gods, and with the human other, the stranger.

Timothy Radcliffe

Someone receives a promotion, gets an important assignment, makes a major discovery, or moves into the president's office. He's lucky, an envious person remarks. He gets the breaks; they're always in his favor. In reality, luck or the breaks of life had little or nothing to do with it. So-called luck usually is found at the exact point where preparation meets opportunity. For a time, an individual may get ahead by pull, but eventually someone with push will displace him. Success is not due to a fortuitous concourse of stars at our birth, but to a steady trail of sparks from the grindstone of hard work each day.

Kenneth Hildebrand

Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.

Ben Hecht

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal, But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.

Immanuel Kant

It is only in appearance that time is a river. It is rather a vast landscape and it is the eye of the beholder that moves.

Thornton Wilder, The Eighth Day

The way I look at it, everything is a trade. You acquire some money, so then you've got no financial burdens, but everyone wants your money and so who can you trust? Or you've got no money and you can trust anyone, but then you've got the worry to pay bills. Which is worse?

Matt LeBlanc

When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use.

Josef Stalin

India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.

Will Durant