"If I have a weakness, it's for timepieces - if I see one I like and can afford it, I'll buy it."

“... if a person is to be unconventional, he must be amusing or he is intolerable: for, in the nature of the case, he guarantees you nothing but amusement. He does not guarantee you any of the little amenities by which society has assured itself that, if it must go to sleep, it will at least sleep in a comfortable chair.”

“The compliments you are about to pay could only sadden me, because what you love in our dear peninsula is exactly the object of our hatreds. Indeed, you crisscross Italy only to meticulously sniff out the traces of our oppressive past, and you are happy, insanely happy, if you have the good fortune to carry home some miserable stone on which our ancestors have trodden.”

Source : "Modernism and Its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity from Spain and Latin America" by Anthony L. Geist, Jose B. Monle-N, Taylor & Francis, (p. 57), 1999.

“Circumstances in the world of politics contribute substantially to whether or not you can be successful.”

“Many countries today have begun the transition from an industrial wealth system and civilization to a knowledge-based system - without appreciating that a new wealth system is impossible without a corresponding new way of life.”

“You must take the compromise to win, or else nothing. That means: you race or you do not.”

“It hurts every day, the absence of someone who was once there.”

Source : Marie Lu (2013). “Champion: A Legend Novel”, p.216, Penguin

“A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.”

“There is no such thing as chance; and what seem to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.”