Enthusiasm could not supply the place of experience.
What is permissible is not always honorable.
It is not enough to acquire wisdom, it is necessary to employ it.
For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men's property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.
Whatever is graceful is virtuous, and whatever is virtuous is graceful.
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.
More is lost by indecision than wrong decision. Indecision is the thief of opportunity. It will steal you blind.
I hate women because they always know where things are.
All this time, I thought we were growing apart because I was leaving Lena behind. But really it was the reverse. She was learning to lie. She was learning to love.
I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.
The storytelling mind is allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and coincidence. It is addicted to meaning. If the storytelling mind cannot find meaningful patterns in the world, it will try to impose them. In short, the storytelling mind is a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will manufacture lies when it can’t.