Great Throughts Treasury

"Settling is about not embracing what is best for you and accepting what you really don't want. When you settle, you accept less than you deserve. Settling becomes a habit and a way of life, but it doesn't have to be. According to Maureen Dowd, The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for"

"So this general with the background in intelligence who is supposed to conquer Afghanistan can't even figure out what Rolling Stone is? We're not talking Guns & Ammo here; we're talking the antiwar hippie magazine."

"The C.E.O. of Google doesn't look like a Dick Cheney World Domination sort whom we should worry about as Google ogles our houses, our oceans, our foibles, our movements and our tastes."

"Shoot to kill. There's no such thing as wounding. And never interfere with your enemy when he's in the process of damaging himself."

"The guilty pleasure I miss most when I'm out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick."

"The Obamas, especially Michelle, have radiated the sense that Americans do not appreciate what they sacrifice by living in a gilded cage. They've forgotten Rule No. 1 of politics: No one sheds tears for anyone lucky enough to live at the White House."

"The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same incestuous swirl."

"The Republican game is hilariously transparent: if Obama doesn't shift to more muscular postures, he's not a patriot. If he does, he's a flip-flopper."

"The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing ? or one person ? at a time."

"The wound-tight, travel-light Obama has a distaste for the adversarial and the random. But if you stick too rigidly to a 'No Drama' rule in the White House, you risk keeping reality at bay. Presidencies are always about crisis management."

"They have been painting the barn red and white, chasing skunks from the stage, clearing bird nests from the spotlights, scraping mildew from costumes and very gingerly, in the manner of city slickers, shooing snakes out of the yard."

"Washington is a place where people have always been suspect of style and overt sexuality. Too much preening signals that you're not up late studying cap-and-trade agreements."

"We've become a nation of Frankensteins, and our monster is us. With everyone working so hard at altering their facades, we no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection."

"We are supposed to believe that every dollar given to a Clinton is a dollar that improves the world. But is it? Clinton-world is a galaxy where personal enrichment and political advancement blend seamlessly, and where a cast of jarringly familiar characters pad their pockets every which way to Sunday."

"When I started as a White House correspondent, there was a lot of criticism from guys saying, 'She focuses too much on the person but not enough on policy.' I never understood that argument at all. I just didn't agree with the premise."

"We had the Belle Epoque. Now we have the Botox Epoque, permeated by plastic emotions from antidepressants and plastic veneers from collagen, silicone, cosmetic surgery and Botox."

"We no longer have natural selection. We have unnatural selection. Survival of the fittest has been replaced by survival of the fakest."

"When you go into a fight saying you're probably going to lose, you're probably going to lose."

"Why can't Google, which likes to see itself as a 'Don't Be Evil' benevolent force in society, just write us a big check for using our stories, so we can keep checks and balances alive and continue to provide the search engine with our stories?"

"Women are affected by lunar tides only once a month; men have raging hormones every day."

"Who knows? If women all end up with the same face and body, men may gravitate toward the quirky. Then the chicks with the laugh lines and love handles will be the lucky ones."

"Women can stand on the Empire State Building and scream to the heavens that they are equal to men and liberated, but until they have the same anatomy, it's a lie. It's more of a man's world today than ever. Men can eat their cake in unlimited bakeries."

"Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful."

"Women fear that men will have their way and then slither away. Men fear that women will come back and boil their bunnies."

"You can't push a morally muscular foreign policy by subverting morality. And you can't occupy a country only to trade one corrupt regime for another."