The highest pleasure to be got out of freedom, and having nothing to do, is labour

The exercise of power is determined by thousands ofinteractions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, allthe more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyonehas a small part of himself in both.

Compromiseis never anything but an ignoble truce between the duty of a man and theterror of a coward.

Icannot divine how it happens that the man who knows the least is the mostargumentative.

People who fight with fire usually end up with ashes.

Thepast is malleable and flexible, changing as our recollection interprets andre-explains what has happened.

The good neighbour looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human, and therefore, brothers.

Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.

Life cannot go on without much forgetting.

Any child who has parents who are interested in him and has a house full of books isin't poor.

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it honours, the men it remembers.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.