Gus Obringer

“There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“...If you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Gold Bug

“If you have only one smile in you, give it to the people you love. Don't be surly at home, then go out in the street and start grinning 'Good morning' at total strangers.”
― Maya Angelou

“Our whole raison d’être was deterrent force. When you don’t deter them any longer, you lose.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon