Action Quote by Joseph Conrad

If a man has a very decided character, has a strongly accentuated career, it is normally the case of course that he makes ardent…

— Theodore Roosevelt

There is a serious and resolute egotism that makes a man interesting to his friends and formidable to his opponents.

— Edwin Percy Whipple

A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology.

— Anonymous

Whenever a man reaches the top of the political ladder, his enemies unite to pull him down. His friends become critical and exacting.

— Henry Adams

Every individual, from the highest to the lowest degree, has his place in the ladder of social life, and around him swirls a little…

— Alexandre Dumas

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to…

— Diogenes

The proud and arrogant man is surrounded by enemies, but the kind hearted man attracts valuable friends.

— Ore Abayomi

A writer's self-consciousness, for which he is much scorned, is really a mode of interestedness, that inevitably turns outward.

— John Updike

“Even in the act of fleeing modern ideologies, however, literary theory reveals its often unconscious complicity with them, betraying its elitism, sexism or individualism…

— Terry Eagleton

He who works for his own interests will arouse much animosity

— Confucius

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own.

— Samuel Johnson

“The mortality rate of literary friendships is high. Writers tend to be bad risks as friends ~ probably for much the same reasons that…

— Anonymous