Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Living is a sickness to which sleep provides relief every sixteen hours. It's a palliative. The remedy is death.

The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.

Do you think that revolutions are made with rose water?

Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.

The art of the parenthesis is one of the greatest secrets of eloquence in Society.

Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.

There are two things that one must get used to or one will find life unendurable: the damages of time and injustices of men.

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.

Some things are easier to legalize than to legitimate.

One must not hope to be more than one can be.

It is commonly supposed that the art of pleasing is a wonderful aid in the pursuit of fortune; but the art of being bored is infinitely more successful.

There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools.

There are certain times when public opinion is the worst of all opinions.

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.

There are more people who wish to be loved than there are who are willing to love.

Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.

Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.

The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live.

Celebrity is the advantage of being known to people who we don't know, and who don't know us.

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.

All passions exaggerate; and they are passions only because they do exaggerate.

When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws.

Man may aspire to virtue, but he cannot reasonably aspire to truth.

Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.

Man arrives as a novice at each age of his life.

Conviction is the conscience of the mind.

Real worth requires no interpreter: its everyday deeds form its emblem.

Preoccupation with money is the great test of small natures, but only a small test of great ones.

The most wasted day is that in which we have not laughed.

Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.

Swallow a toad in the morning and you will encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.

There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

The proper study of mankind is books.

I have written about 10 books, all just practical encouragement for moms.

Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature.

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist.

As I have studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I have come to know through the power of the Spirit of God, that these books contain the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.

Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.