I am afraid of people with too much charm. They devour you. In the end you are made a sacrifice to the exercise of their fascinating gift and their insincerity.

It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

Marco Polo tells the tale of The Old Man in the Mountains and how he recruits new members to his Band of Assassins by means of drugs, beautiful women, lush gardens, and religious promises. The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.