“Jonathan had been around Washington long enough to know that no offer was exactly what it seemed.”

“So many people of liberal persuasion value their own progressive opinions more than they value the people they hold those opinions about.”

“The only way to prove his willingness to wait would be to wait.”

“He was vain and tended to surround himself with intellectual and moral pygmies.”

“He was the sort of man who only wanted to be told what he already assumed was true.”

“Our sense of history has grown dangerously thin, and our sense of proportion with it.”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“If I really wanted to say or ask anything important (to her imposing father) I could not trust my tongue to get it right.”

“We all have an unscientific weakness for being always in the right, and this weakness seems to be particularly common among professional and amateur politicians. But the only way to apply something...”

“Why don't these translation books just include general phrases that could be applied in a variety of situations like, "Say nothing unless it's in English"?”

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.”

“All good writing is persuasive writing; persuading the reader to buy what you're selling, to side with you, to believe the tales you tell.”

“Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled wit...”