Quote of the Day

You must be old to see all this, and have money enough to pay for your experience. Every bon mot I utter costs me a purseful of money; half a million of my private fortune has passed through my hands that I might learn what I know now—not only the whole of my father’s fortune; but also my own salary, and my large literary income for more than fifty years. I have also seen a million and a half expended for great objects by the princes with whom I have been intimately connected…More than mere talent is required to become a proficient. The person must also…have an opportunity of watching the cards held by the players of the age, and of participating in their gain and loss.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, quoted by Johann Peter Eckermann in Conversations of Goethe