“The Stoics forbid this emotion to their sages as being base and cowardly.”

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.”

“[What best becomes a man is whatever is most peculiarly his own.] [B]”

“The way of truth is one and artless: the way of private gain and success in such affairs as we are entrusted with is double, uneven and fortuitous. I”

“We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others.”

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself”

“Open talk opens the way to further talk, as wine does or love.”

“Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a dominion over us, since it is by chance we live.”

“If you walk on stilts, you're still walking on your feet. If you sit on the highest throne in the world, you're still sitting on your ass.”

“As for dying we can only assay that once; we are all apprentices when it comes to that”

“If I can, I shall keep my death from saying anything that my life has not already said."

“We are never at home, we are always beyond. Fear, desire, hope, project us toward the future and steal from us the consideration of what is, to busy us with what will be, even when we shall no longer be."

“Nothing doth sooner breed a distaste or satiety than plenty.”

“If a man has no heart for either living or dying; if he has no will either to resist or to run away: what are we to do with him?”

“Happiness is a singular incentive to mediocrity.”

“With very little ado I stop the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be troublesome before it transports me. He who stops not the start will never be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never, get them out when they are once got in;”

“I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.”

Her source of self respect was that she had not - as she put it - given up and crawled into safety somewhere. Into a safe marriage.

If someone cracks up, what does that mean? At what point does a person about to fall to pieces say: I'm cracking up? And if I were to crack up, what form would it take?

Little Tamar, forget the long ago. We are here and we are now, and that is all. We are making a new start.

Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty.

Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.

Loyalty is a noble quality, so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to truth and decency.

The most effective indirect approach is one that lures or startles the opponent into a false move - so that, as in ju-jitsu, his own effort is turned into the lever of his overthrow.