"The colour, noise and festivity failed to elevate Carfilhiot’s mood; in fact—so he told himself—never had he witnessed so much pointless nonsense."

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“Evidently you do not trust me. This does not predispose me to trust you.”

“My fees are not too high. Your wage scale may simply be too low.”

“My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.”

““Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?” asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.”

“I suspect that the word was invented by second-rate intelligences to describe the incomprehensible activities of their betters.”

“Of all questions, why? is the least pertinent. It begs the question; it assumes the larger part of its own response; to wit, that a sensible response exists.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred; for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together, and will be always attain…"

— Niccolò Machiavelli

Philosophy1449–1527

#family

"On the diamond, I had been rough on Babe. I'd never taken my spurs out of his hide and one day he'd come looking for me in the Detroit clubhouse with fistic mayhem in mind. We'd won and lost duels to …"

— Ty Cobb

Music1886–1961

#time

"In that Macondo forgotten even by the birds, where the dust and the heat had become so strong that it was difficult to breathe, secluded by solitude and love and by the solitude of love in a house whe…"

— Gabriel García Márquez

Literature1927–2014

#love

"We never fully understood why Milosevic decided to give Sarajevo to the Muslims. But in retrospect, the best explanation may be that he was fed up with the Bosnian Serbs and had decided to weaken thei…"

— Richard Holbrooke

Politics1941–2010

#leadership