“He [Erasmus] believed with Horace, the Roman poet, that nothing prevents us from ‘stating the truth with a smile upon our lips.’”
Hendrik van Loon The Story of Mankind
“Anyone who says he is not emotional is not getting what he should out of life.” Ezer Weizman
“And now the strifes and uncertainties of the past are finished. We see around us on every side the proofs of stability and improvement.…”
U.S. Vice-President John C. Breckinridge, inaugurating the new U.S. Senate Chamber, January 4, 1859 (apparently history didn’t end on cue then either)
“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
Friedrich Hayek
“The only exact testimony of a man is his actions.”
Thomas Jefferson (ironically, given his own life)
“True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.” Paul Sweeney (“Thought du jour” in “Social Studies” in G&M December 20 2004).
“When I enrolled in a creative writing course, one of my first poems was returned with the following comment from the teacher: ‘Put more fire in the poems or vice versa.” H.A. Maxson quoted in Reader’s Digest Canadian edition December 2004
“Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.”
Wilson Mizner