"When you see a merger between two giants in a declining industry, it can look like the financial version of a couple having a baby to save a marriage."

"Lots of countries have great constitutions, but their leaders have a practice of ignoring the rules whenever they feel like it."

"The America that I think most Americans would want, most economists on the right or left would want, is one in which a smart, ambitious, hardworking person without a huge amount of resources has a pretty good shot, in the end, of beating out a less smart, less ambitious, less hardworking rich person."

"Poverty is not the simple result of bad geography, bad culture, bad history. It's the result of us: of the ways that people choose to organize their societies."

"It's enough to indulge and to be selfish but true happiness is really when you start giving back."

"Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife he is always proud of himself as the source of it."

"Kind words produce happiness. How often have we ourselves been made happy by kind words, in a manner and to an extent which we are unable to explain!"

"Tell me not of joy: there's none Now my little sparrow's gone He, just as you, Would toy and woo, He would chirp and flatter me, He would hang the wing awhile, Till at length he saw me smile, Lord! how sullen he would be!"