A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

Highly educated young people are tutored, taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave them alone.

David Brooks

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day.

Carl Sagan

What is called generosity is usually only the vanity of giving; we enjoy the vanity more than the thing given.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The moral sense is the first excellence of well-organized man.

Thomas Jefferson

In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing but ugliness and unhappiness.

George Bernard Shaw

We talk a lot in our home together about where we're going, what I'm doing.

Melinda Gates

Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

If we ask, we should also be prepared to give.

Stephen Richards

Mankind is not a circle with a single center but an ellipse with two focal points of which facts are one and ideas the other.

Victor Hugo

It has been said that Poland is dead, exhausted, enslaved, but here is the proof of her life and triumph.

Henryk Sienkiewicz

The insidiousness of science lies in its claim to be not a subject, but a method.

Katherine Fullerton Gerould