“To make any gain some outlay is necessary.”

It is easier to begin well than to finish well.

That which you know, know not; and that which you see, see not.

To snatch the worm from the trap.

No man will be respected by others who is despised by his own relatives.

I much prefer a compliment, even if insincere, to sincere criticism.

To waste one’s breath; to pump into a sieve.

A woman finds it much easier to do ill than well.

He who falls in love meets a worse fate than he who leaps from a rock.

It is a bitter disappointment when you have sown benefits, to reap injuries.

A woman without paint is like food without salt.

A mouse never entrusts his life to only one hole.

The gods play games with men as balls.

In grasping at uncertainties we lost that which is certain.

In everything the middle road is best.

Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.

I love truth and wish to have it always spoken to me: I hate a liar.

I do think I have an ability to record sensual and emotional facts and factoids, to construct a convincing surface of what life feels like, both physical life and emotional life.

The Last Argument of Kings.

Wars–and what is war except crime on a mass scale?–destroy rather than produce.

You remember too much,” my mother said to me recently. “Why hold onto all that?” And I said, “where can I put it down?

A boy and a girl started dating after he backed his car into hers.

Lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.

I thrive on that; I rise to the occasion of the circumstances.

Cooking is the showy side of domesticity.