Yes, we must ever be friends; and of all who offer you friendship, let me be ever the first, the truest, the nearest and dearest!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one’s wit against one’s good nature.
—Montesquieu (French Political Philosopher)
Fraud and prevarication are servile vices. They sometimes grow out of the necessities, always out of the habits, of slavish and degenerate spirits. It is an erect countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and honor, and assure to us the confidence of mankind.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman)
A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.
—Kenneth Tynan (English Theatre Critic, Writer)
Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.
—Robert Ranke Graves (British Writer)
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist knows it.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (American Physicist)
Fame is the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic.
—Don DeLillo (American Author)
There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.
—Simone Weil (French Philosopher, Political Activist)
Since I couldn’t actuate the things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no.
—Sidney Poitier (American Actor, Film Director)
No rule is so general, which admits not some exception.
—Robert Burton (English Scholar, Clergyman)