Joe Biden

There will come a day, I promise you, when the thought of your son, or daughter, or your wife or your husband, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen. My prayer for you is that day will come sooner than later.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

Arafat’s departure has created an awesome opportunity.

[on Trump] This guy’s shame has no limits.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.

I believe health care is a basic right. If education – you’re entitled to an education, why wouldn’t you be entitled to adequate health care? Period.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.

Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free.

Hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than personal liking.

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.

Ready are you? What know you of ready?

Friendship is the marriage of the soul, and this marriage is liable to divorce.

How does it happen, Maecenas, that no one is content with that lot of which he has chosen or which chance has thrown his way, but praises those who follow a different course?

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

I am not much an advocate for traveling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply, the population. When it reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will be hailed as essential.

A crime persevered in a thousand centuries ceases to be a crime, and becomes a virtue. This is the law of custom, and custom supersedes all other forms of law.

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist’s custom.