Great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they perform.

Prosperity is the surest breeder of insolence I know.

It may be called the Master Passion, the hunger for self-approval.

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs the jackass.

I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast-but for luncheon-for dinner- for tea-for supper-for between meals.

Eventually, I sickened of people, myself included, who didn't think enough of themselves to make something of themselves- people who did only what they had to and never what they could have done. I learned from them the infected loneliness that comes at the end of every misspent day. I knew I could do better.