“It is a
good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.  Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it
intently.   The quotations when engraved
upon the memory give you good thoughts.  They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”   Sir
Winston Spencer Churchill, from Roving
Commission: My Early Life [1930]

“I cannot
forecast to you the action of Russia.  It
is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”   Churchill, Radio broadcast [Oct. 1, 1939]

“The optimist proclaims that we live in
the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”   James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion [1926]

“Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that
happen to a man.”  Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile [1935]

“We’re
all poor nuts and things happen, and we yust get mixed in wrong, that’s all.”  Eugene O’Neill, Anna Christie [1922]

“All good
writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Undated letter

“Ninety-nine
percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great
danger of contagion.”  Thornton Wilder, The Matchmaker [1954]

“How confusing the beams from memory’s
lamp are; / One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. /

What is the secret of the trick? / How
did I get so old so quick?”

Ogden Nash, You Can’t Get There from
Here, [1957]