The little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour.

If courtesans and strumpets were to be prosecuted with as much rigor as some silly people would have it, what locks or bars would be sufficient to preserve the honor of our wives and daughters?

Bernard Mandeville

It is not something I must do but something I want to do

James Fixx

Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.

Anthony Powell

Broadway, such as I see it now and have seen it for twenty-five years, is a ramp that was conceived by St. Thomas Aquinas while he was yet in the womb. It was meant originally to be used only by snakes and lizards, by the horned toad and the red heron, but when the great Spanish Armada was sunk the human kind wriggled out of the ketch and slopped over, creating by a sort of foul, ignominious squirm and wiggle the cunt-like cleft that runs from the Battery south to the golf links north through the dead and wormy center of Manhattan Island.

Henry Miller

What wise or stupid thing can man conceive That was not thought of in ages long ago?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Man dies of cold, not of darkness.

Miguel de Unamuno

Yeah, I read history. But it doesn't make you nice. Hitler read history, too.

Joan Rivers

A man's indebtedness is not virtue; his repayment is. Virtue begins when he dedicates himself actively to the job of gratitude.

Ruth Benedict

Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance.

J. Donald Walters

Curiosity is a delicate little plant which, aside from stimulation, is mainly in need of freedom.

Albert Einstein

No doubt there are other important things in life besides conflict, but there are not many other things so inevitably interesting. The very saints interest us most when we think of them as enganged in a conflict with the Devil.

Robert Lynd, The Blue Lion

...it possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States.

Bertrand Russell