I don’t do quagmires.
Enjoy your time in public service. It may well be one of the most interesting and challenging times of your life.
One of your tasks is to separate the “personal” from the “substantive.” The two can become confused, especially if someone rubs the President wrong.
Your performance depends on your people. Select the best, train them and back them. When errors occur, give sharper guidance. If errors persist or if the fit feels wrong, help them move on. The country cannot afford amateur hour in the White House.
Don’t blame the boss. He has enough problems.
You’re thinking of Eurpoe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe.
When you raise issues with the President, try to come away with both that decision and also a precedent. Pose issues so as to evoke broader policy guidance. This can help to answer a range of similar issues likely to arise later.
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.
Does he council you better who bids you, Money, by right means, if you can: but by any means, make money?
An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.
Why should I be unhappy? Every parcel of my being is in full bloom.
Better a broken promise than none at all.
How many attractions for us have our passing fellows in the streets, both male and female, which our ethics forbid us to express, which yet infuse so much pleasure into life. A lovely child, a handsome youth, a beautiful girl, a heroic man, a maternal woman, a venerable old man, charm us, though strangers, and we cannot say so, or look at them but for a moment.
A toddling little girl is a center of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.
If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.
Why do the words I want to say, struggle to come out of my mouth. Why does fear have such a grip over me. I shouldn’t have to battle to say all the complimentary things I so desperately want to share. It shouldn’t be this hard, that I have to force myself; it’s wrong that such loving words, should have to be spoken under such duress. I’m aware of how wrong it is, but withholding is all I have known, even though I desire so badly to share my thoughts and feelings with you, as freely as you do with me.
I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.
The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.
The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.
Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
