[Beowolf] is considered an epic because of its long speeches, its digressions, its repetition, and its being required.

Beauty is only skin deep, and the world is full of thin skinned people.

I love a finished speaker, I really, truly do I don't mean one who's polished, I just mean one who's through.

Shakespeare, who never could think up a plot by himself, found this one [Macbeth] in Holinshed's Chronicles, changing it just enough so that no one would recognize the source. He didn't count on the resourcefulness of modern scholars, who have to discover things like this to become associate professors.

Rather than earn money, it was Thoreau's idea to reduce his wants so that he would not need to buy anything. As he went around preaching this ingenious idea, the shopkeepers of Concord hoped he would drop dead.

Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.

Good sportsmanship we hail, we sing, It's always pleasant when you spot it. There's only one unhappy thing: You have to lose to prove that you've got it.