Sydney Smith

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.

It's good to like yourself, and that only comes from hard work, from doing. But vanity is dangerous; it can trip you badly.

Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.

Trying to rebuild Afghanistan on the cheap has left the country in the hands of warlords and an impotent Northern Alliance puppet regime that runs Kabul and nothing else.