“Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil’s alphabet – the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies.”

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly.

If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.

I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind – and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.

The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness. A spirited mind never stops within itself; it is always aspiring and going beyond its strength.

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book.

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.

How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

The alphabet was invented in Iraq, so it’s a cool place.

We’re so conditioned to the syntax of the camera that we don’t realize that we are running on only half the visual alphabet…

I would not ever try to be a show intellectual, which I was accused of doing a while on ABC. I thought you were supposed to read the guests’ books.

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?