MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE QUOTATIONS FROM WRITERS, POLITICAL LEADERS, AND OTHERS

---"An occasional compliment is necessary to keep up one's self-respect. ..When you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one." --- American author and humorist Mark Twain, in a notebook observation he reportedly wrote in 1894.

---"I can last two months on a good compliment." --- American author and humorist Mark Twain.

---"Self-criticism is the secret weapon of a democracy." --- Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic Party Presidential Candidate in 1952 and 1956 (this quotation recalled from my memory of having once read this great 1950s observation by Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, and I will continue to search for the exact occasion and date on which then-Governor Stevenson offered this memorable observation in the 1950s).

---"Never despair!" (English translation of the Latin phrase "Nil Desperandum!") -- Horace, or Quintus Horatius Flaccus, (65 BC to 8 BC), a very influential poet and prominent citizen of the Roman Empire during the reign of Emperor Augustus.