Wisdom

...You can be talented as a wolf is breathtakingly fierce...Silver and gray, like smoke in the trees - but what do you do with terrible beauty?...

The fact that you can't see how much you're worth makes you worth so much more.' She opened her mouth once, her brow bunched, but nothing came out. She didn't know the words to ask. I continued. 'A diamond doesn't know how much it's worth; it's just beautiful because it exists.

In cities it is useless to look at the stars or to describe them, worship them, or seek direction from them. When lost, one should follow the tracks of the camels.

The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.

The unknown characters of writing seem to be endowed with an evil of life of their own as though sentient, and fain would wrest themselves forth from the parchment and wreak mischief on whomsoever gazes upon them.

The writer as boxer says he develops by, 'learning from everyone who'll spar with me.

We pass judgements as to merits in areas we have no competence.

Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me.

Integrity is doing what is right and truthful, and doing as you say you would do.

Man is not weak - knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.

To remain sane in a mad world is the true victory.

Kid's books should be just as good as any other books. No. They should be held to a *higher* standard than other literature for the same reason that we take extra care with children's food.

Hope is a satisfaction unto itself and need not be fulfilled to be appreciated.

Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.

When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women.

Never take advice from a donkey.

Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard but takes the one before it and plays the game.

Purity and simplicity are the two wings with which man soars above the earth and all temporary nature.

New struggles. -- After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries -- a colossal, horrible shadow. God is dead, but given the way people are, there may still be caves for millennia in which his shadow is displayed. -- And we -- we must still defeat his shadow as well!

Pender laughed. 'Verify? In this day and age? Who cares about verifying anything? It's all about the speed. Who gets there first defines the truth. You know that as well as any man living.