To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown.
The most formidable people in the world, and now the most dangerous, people who... lay down the doctrine that every frontier must be the starting out point for invasion.
Although a skillful flatterer is a most delightful companion if you have him all to yourself, his taste becomes very doubtful when he takes to complimenting other people.
But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had-power.
I was always amused that people were either skeptical or surprised that I would choose a Hillary Clinton as a secretary of state. To my mind, having somebody smart, tough, capable with her own stature, who could travel around the world and command the stage, was a huge asset.
Young people, nowadays, imagine that money is everything. Yes, murmured Lord Henry, settling his button-hole in his coat; and when they grow older they know it.
And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning.
The reason we're governing right now is because we defeated moderate Republicans with moderate Democrats. And people need to be patient about that and realize that compromise is not evil.