The reader of these Memoirs will discover that I never had any fixed aim before my eyes, and that my system, if it can be called a system, has been to glide away unconcernedly on the stream of life, trusting to the wind wherever it led.
Giacomo Casanova

The history of my life must begin by the earliest circumstance which my memory can evoke; it will therefore commence when I had attained the age of eight years and four months.
Giacomo Casanova

By recollecting the pleasures I have had formerly, I renew them, I enjoy them a second time, while I laugh at the remembrance of troubles now past, and which I no longer feel.
Giacomo Casanova

I have met with some of them - very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools.
Giacomo Casanova

I learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess either of food or abstinence, and I never had any physician except myself.
Giacomo Casanova

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.
George Bernard Shaw

She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.
George Bernard Shaw

The nineteenth century was completely lacking in logic, it had cosmic terms and hopes, and aspirations, and discoveries, and ideals but it had no logic.
Gertrude Stein

Communists are people who fancied that they had an unhappy childhood.
Gertrude Stein

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.
Charlie Chaplin

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
Viktor E. Frankl

My father always used to say that when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.
Lee Iacocca

Well, I wouldn't say that I was in the great class, but I had a great time while I was trying to be great.
Harry S. Truman

I had faith in Israel before it was established, I have in it now. I believe it has a glorious future before it - not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.
Harry S. Truman

Any man who has had the job I've had and didn't have a sense of humor wouldn't still be here.
Harry S. Truman

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted.
Franz Kafka

The man who has planned badly, if fortune is on his side, may have had a stroke of luck; but his plan was a bad one nonetheless.
Herodotus

My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.
Jack Welch

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.
Desmond Tutu

I had the right to remain silent... but I didn't have the ability.
Ron White