You're stubborn- anyone ever tell you that before?

The euro is our common fate, and Europe is our common future.

Angela Merkel

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent -- for every effect a perfect cause -- and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must learn which ceremonies may be breached occasionally at our convenience and which ones may never be if we are to live pleasantly with our fellow man.

Amy Vanderbilt

Soft focus is an important skill that can effect us metaphorically. In other words, the way we see the future has everything to do with how well we can look up and see the expanded horizon before us.

Peter Kline

Common sense and nature will do a lot to make the pilgrimage of life not too difficult.

W. Somerset Maugham

I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.

Alexis de Tocqueville

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

Jesus Christ

A fact is like a sack -- it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.

Luigi Pirandello

Nobody owes anybody a living, but everybody is entitled to a chance.

Jack Dempsey

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

Ben Okri

All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.

Rebecca West

All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.

Hilaire Belloc