The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams, an intensity of expectation that, in the end, diminishes the reality.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

I've always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen's faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.

Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and fans the bonfire.

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.

We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer.

I've always felt that if you back down from a fear the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people.

I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up this diminishes fear knowing what must be done does away with fear.

The curse of the romantic is a greed for dreams an intensity of expectation that in the end diminishes the reality.

Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.