The total history of almost anyone would shock almost everyone. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody. ~Benjamin Franklin


What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. ~Susan Sontag


You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door. ~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887


A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. ~Winston Churchill


A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man. ~Arthur Miller


The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne


Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world. ~Walter Savage Landor


He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. ~Winston Churchill


If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others. ~Francois duc de la Rochefoucauld


A hundred men together are the hundredth part of a man. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation. ~W. Somerset Maugham


Freaks are the much needed escape from the humdrum. They are poetry. ~Albert Perry


A man never knows how to say goodbye; a woman never knows when to say it. ~Helen Rowland


In general, of course, a stranger who tries to get you into an automobile is anything but noble, and in general a person who quotes great American novelists is anything but treacherous, and in general a man who says you needn't worry about money, or a man who smokes cigarettes, is somewhere in between. ~Lemony Snicket


His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets. ~Dorothy Parker


History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. ~Abba Eban


Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank? ~Walt Whitman