“One falls to the ground in trying to sit on two stools.”

Time, which wears down and diminishes all things, augments and increases good deeds, because a good turn liberally offered to a reasonable man grows continually through noble thought and memory.

In this mortal life, nothing is blessed throughout.

If you want to avoid seeing an idiot, break the mirror.

A habit does not a monk make.

Debts and lies are generally mixed together.

Languages exist by arbitrary institutions and conventions among peoples; words, as the dialecticians tell us, do not signify naturally, but at our pleasure.

I never drink without a thirst, either present or future.

Science sans conscience. Knowledge without conscience is but the ruin of the soul.

Pantagruel was telling me that he believed the queen had given the symbolic word used among her subjects to denote sovereign good cheer, when she said to her tabachins, A panacea.

It is my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth.

The scent of wine, oh how much more agreeable, laughing, praying, celestial and delicious it is than that of oil!

Frugality is for the vulgar.

Tell the truth and shame the devil.

Misery is the company of lawsuits.

I drink no more than a sponge.

If the skies fall, one may hope to catch larks.

The main thing is to remain oneself, under any circumstances; that was and is our common purpose.

One must learn to forgive and not to hold a hostile, bitter attitude of mind, which offends those about us and prevents us from enjoying ourselves; one must recognize human shortcomings and adjust himself to them rather than to be constantly finding fault with them.

All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall. —Vivekananda

We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.

The Fascist game plan: a single party, speaking with one voice, controlling every state institution, claiming to represent all people, and labeling the entire sham a triumph of the popular will.

How can one be bored in a world where a billion examples of human ingenuity, peculiarity, pigheadedness, and compassion are on regular view?

The more extreme advocates from one side helped to validate the arguments of extremists on the other.

It is one of history’s ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.