Wisdom is the quality that keeps you from getting into situations where you need it.

Commemoration of Anne & Joachim, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary If you were to rise early every morning, as an instance of self-denial, as a method of renouncing indulgence, as a means of redeeming your time and of fitting your spirit for prayer, you would find mighty advantages from it. This method, though it seem such a small circumstance of life, would in all probability be a means [toward] great piety. It would keep it constantly in your head that softness and idleness were to be avoided and that self-denial was a part of Christianity... It would teach you to exercise power over yourself, and make you able by degrees to renounce other pleasures and tempers that war against the soul.

I believe that everything you do bad comes back to you. So everything that I do that's bad, I'm going to suffer for it. But in my heart, I believe what I'm doing is right. So I feel like I'm going to heaven.

Love is never having to say you're sorry.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

Farce follow'd Comedy, and reach'd her prime. In ever laughing Foote's fantastic time, Mad wag! who pardon'd none, nor spared the best, And turn'd some very serious things to jest. Nor church nor state escaped his public sneers, Arms nor the gown, priests, lawyers, volunteers, Alas, poor Yorick! now forever mute! Whoever loves a laugh must sigh for Foote. We smile, perforce, when histrionic scenes Ape the swoln dialogue of kings and queens, When Chrononhotonthelogos must die, And Arthur struts in mimic majesty.

The foremost art of kings is the ability to endure hatred.

I hope that no American . . . will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant.

Mingle a little folly with your wisdom; a little nonsense now and then is pleasant.

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Keep doing some kind of work, that the devil may always find you employed.

He seems to be of great authority. Close with him, give him gold; and though authority be a stubborn bear, yet he is oft led by the nose with gold.

The good ideas are all hammered out in agony by individuals, not spewed out by groups.

So liv'd our sires, ere doctors learn'd to kill, And multiplied with theirs the weekly bill.

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck.

Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him.

Many of the world's troubles are not due just to Russia or communism. They would be with us in any event because we live in an era of revolution--the revolution of rising expectations.

The basic difference between being assertive and being aggressive is how our words and behavior affect the rights and well being of others.

YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown.