Whoever is admitted or sought for, in company, upon any other account than that of his merit and manners, is never respected there, but only made use of. We will have such-a-one, for he sings prettily; we will invite such-a-one to a ball, for he dances well; we will have such-a-one at supper, for he is always joking and laughing; we will ask another because he plays deep at all games, or because he can drink a great deal. These are all vilifying distinctions, mortifying preferences, and exclude all ideas of esteem and regard. Whoever is had (as it is called) in company for the sake of any one thing singly, is singly that thing, and will never be considered in any other light; consequently never respected, let his merits be what they will.

What people still do not like to admit is that there were two crimes in the form of one. Just as the destruction of Jewry was the necessary condition for the rise and expansion of Nazism, so . I first noticed this point when reading an essay by the late Ernest Gellner, who at the end of the war had warned Eastern Europeans that collective punishment of Germans would put them under Stalin's tutelage indefinitely. They would always feel the guilty need for an ally against potential German revenge.

Christopher Hitchens

The good Lord is amazing He opens up doors. I was close to abandoning the dream, and He was like, 'Hey, slow down there, buddy.'

David Nail

One of the things I like enormously about Bob Weinstein is that that he's the only studio head I have ever known who will change his mind and say he was wrong.

Dean Koontz

I have met the enemy, and it is the eyes of other people.

Benjamin Franklin

The more corrupt the state, the more laws.

Tacitus

My attitude is never to be satisfied, never enough, never.

Duke Ellington

I was the originator of smack. Some guys rattle with smack; with other guys it rolls right off their shoulders like nothing.

Deacon Jones

The Rich arrived in pairsAnd also in Rolls Royces;They talked of their affairsIn loud and strident voices...The Poor arrived in Fords,Whose features they resembled;They laughed to see so many LordsAnd Ladies all assembled.The People in BetweenLooked underdone and harassed,And our of place and mean,And Horribly embarrassed.

Hilaire Belloc, The Garden Party

Reason is the enemy of faith

Martin Luther King Jr.

It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.

Emile Durkheim

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

Samuel Johnson, J. Boswell The L