"We have the choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place--or not to bother"

“Buy what you love. Love those who can't be bought. Take in all the day has to offer. Give it all away.”

“I have a backlog of novels which I would love to be working on and would be working on if I were not obliged to hold down a full time job.”

“Nothing can substitute for just plain hard work”

“Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage.”

Source : George Saintsbury (1934). “A history of criticism and literary taste in Europe from the earliest texts to the present day”

“What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.”

Source : "Du Contrat Social" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by G. D. H. Cole, 1913.

“The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.”

“Sometimes we shrink from leadership because our pride makes us afraid of failure. That's not humility.”

“Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.”

Source : Bernard Malamud (1979). “Dubin's Lives”, Penguin Books