"Up until the Depression, recession had a moral character: it was supposed to purge the body economic of the greed and excess that attends a business expansion."

"The year 2008 was a reminder to those who had forgotten that there is such a thing as history and that the cycle of famine and feast in commerce, first identified in antiquity and well understood in the Middle Ages, was not suddenly abolished in modern times."

"To make a love story, you need a couple of young people, but to reflect on the nature of love, you're better off with old ones. That is a fact of life and literature - and of the novel ever since it fell in love with love in the 18th century."

"If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside."

"The only limit to human potential is the canvas of tomorrow is painted with the actions of today."

"There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery's version of the Barack Obama 'Hope' poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama's Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists' Washington, the place we learned to despise during the last administration."

"A dream nurtured by daily toil will inevitably outshine a wish born of idle hope. Remember this in moments of decisive trial — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings."