One receives as reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom --such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it --those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

Denis Diderot

To have a great man for an intimate friend seems pleasant to those who have never tried it those who have, fear it.

Homer

He who excuses himself, accuses himself.

Gabriel Meurier

I simply contend that the middle-class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable, honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life, of honorable business methods.

Gertrude Stein

I'm on a search for my future ex-wife.

Richie Sambora

I have never found, in a long experience of politics, that criticism is ever inhibited by ignorance.

Harold MacMillan

It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

Helen Keller

The power of patriarchy has been to make maleness feared and to make men feel that it is better to be feared that to be loved. Whether they can confess this or not, men know that just is not true.

Bell Hooks

Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short; youth is nimble, age is lame; Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; Youth is wild, and age is tame.

William Shakespeare

An autobiography is not about pictures; it's about the stories; it's about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people's privacy.

Boris Becker

I have resolved on an enterprise that has no precedent and will have no imitator. I want to set before my fellow human beings a man in every way true to nature and that man will be myself.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship.

Henry A. Wallace