“Be short in all religious exercises. Better leave the people longing than loathing. No conversion after the first half hour.”

“A happy marriage is a long conversation which always seems too short.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

“The world," he resumed after a short pause, "has no faith in any man's conversion; it never forgets what he was, it never believes him anything better, it is an inexorable and stupid judge.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Uncle Silas

“Idleness makes hours pass slowly and years swiftly. Activity makes the hours short and the years long.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

“For both long and short periods there is a consistent though not precise relation between the rate of growth of the quantity of money and the rate of growth of nominal income. If the quantity of money grows rapidly, so will nominal income, and conversely. The relation is much closer for long than for short periods”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“Half of your attention is better than all of anyone else's.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

“It’s always better to tell a half-truth than a half-lie.”

Ben Aaronovitch book Moon Over Soho

“Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.”

John Banville The Sea

“Better to have a big goal and reach half of it than to have no goal and reach all of it.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That endeavour and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer