"The environment has to be balanced against the economy." This quote portrays environmental concerns as a luxury, views measures to solve environmental problems as incurring a net cost, and considers leaving environmental problems unsolved to be a money-saving device. This one-liner puts the truth exactly backwards. Environmental messes cost us huge sums of money both in the short run and in the long run; cleaning up or preventing those messes saves us huge sums in the long run, and often in the short run as well. In caring for the health of our surroundings, just as of our bodies, it is cheaper and preferable to avoid getting sick than to try to cure illnesses after they have developed. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

“Friendships that are obtained by payments, and not by greatness or nobility of mind, may indeed be earned, but they are not secured.” The Prince

But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them. Mansfield Park

Being is unrecognizable unless it manages to seem, and seeming is feeble unless it manages to be. Gorgias