Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
Funny business, a woman's career: the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman.
Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.
Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.
Keep cool and you command everybody.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.
The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.
Love truth, and pardon error.
A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
It's important to begin a search on a full stomach.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
My eyes swam and watered and I literally couldn't breathe through the pain.
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
Greatness is more than potential. It is the execution of that potential. Beyond the raw talent. You need the appropriate training. You need the discipline. You need the inspiration. You need the drive.
When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
A moment later, I caught my breath, but I didn't say anything.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.
He who laughs, lasts!
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn't can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it.
We rocked to a stop still on a downslope.
A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?
There are two types of people--those who come into a room and say, 'Well, here I am!' and those who come in and say, 'Ah, there you are.'
The car slewed to a stop and only then did I notice that it wasn't a cop car, ambulance or fire-engine.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.
Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side.
A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?
When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
You never find yourself until you face the truth.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.
The average person thinks he isn't.
I stand in awe of my body.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
We are always in search of the redeeming formula, the crystallizing thought.
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. The transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
While we have the gift of life, it seems to me that only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.
True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.
Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty... Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.
We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
Ask a deeply religious Christian if he?d rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don?t seem so bad lately.
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
Whatever you fear most has no power - it is your fear that has the power.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
I stand in awe of my body.
Speak when you are angry--and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Things are only impossible until they're not.
It's wonderful what we can do if we're always doing.
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
You have to recognize when the right place and the right time fuse and take advantage of that opportunity. There are plenty of opportunities out there. You can't sit back and wait.
Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law.
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.
What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that.
While we have the gift of life, it seems to me that only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
We do not believe if we do not live and work according to our belief.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
The pain of making the necessary sacrifices always hurts more than you think it's going to. I know. It sucks. That being said, doing something seriously creative is one of the most amazing experiences one can have, in this or any other lifetime. If you can pull it off, it's worth it. Even if you don't end up pulling it off, you'll learn many incredible, magical, valuable things. It's NOT doing it when you know you full well you HAD the opportunity- that hurts FAR more than any failure.
Do it now. It is not safe to leave a generous feeling to the cooling influences of the world.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
I like coincidences. They make me wonder about destiny, and whether free will is an illusion or just a matter of perspective. They let me speculate on the idea of some master plan that, from time to time, we're allowed to see out of the corner of our eye.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
I felt the doors open near me, and then saw a confusion of booted feet moving close by.
More movement, and the sense of bodies being shackled in alongside of me.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.
He who laughs, lasts!
Vanessa didn't like it, but I figured a cop wasn't going to stop for a kid waving his hat in the street, not that day. They just might stop if they saw Darryl bleeding there, though. I argued briefly with her and Darryl settled it by lurching to his feet and dragging himself down toward Market Street.
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.
It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.
There were millions of ways that the world could kill me.
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.
Sometimes you can't see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can have. It's much sexier than any body part.
Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side.
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
Depend not on fortune, but on conduct.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
For the night was not impartial. No, the night loved some more than others, served some more than others.
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
Nothing is said that has not been said before.
Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.
The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.
I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.
If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
If there's one thing I know it's God does love a good joke.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
Looks are part of business. A businessman should never stand out more than his customers. His mannerisms, his clothes, everything about him... Moderation is the key.
Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
I got up the third step and reached for the fourth, but it wasn't there.
Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in life.
At my lemonade stand I used to give the first glass away free and charge five dollars for the second glass. The refill contained the antidote.
Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again.
The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from anybody else.
You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.
'Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.' Under the influence of this pestilent morality, I am forever letting tomorrow's work slop backwards into today's, and doing painfully and nervously today what I could do quickly and easily tomorrow.
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.
It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.
Do not envy a sinner; you don't know what disaster awaits him.
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
I heard them shouting through the muffling canvas of the bag, and then I was being impersonally hauled to my feet by my wrists, my arms wrenched up behind my back, my shoulders screaming.
Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.
Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
I believe that every now and then it is important to laugh at ourselves and take a lighter approach to our life conditions.
Better by far you should forget and smile than you should remember and be sad.
It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
History is more or less bunk.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
Never eat more than you can lift.
There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living.
I feel like a tiny bird with a big song!
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
We are always in search of the redeeming formula, the crystallizing thought.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.
Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently. For in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
I don't like composers who think. It gets in the way of their plagiarism.
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble.
It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
I don't like composers who think. It gets in the way of their plagiarism.
Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.
You don't get anything clean without getting something else dirty.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.
We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
I am not young enough to know everything.
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
If my mental map was right, we were heading down to Fisherman's Wharf.
In the absences of a decent time machine, fiction remains the most sturdy vehicle for visiting other eras.
When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
Truth has beauty, power and necessity.
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
Vanessa didn't like it, but I figured a cop wasn't going to stop for a kid waving his hat in the street, not that day. They just might stop if they saw Darryl bleeding there, though. I argued briefly with her and Darryl settled it by lurching to his feet and dragging himself down toward Market Street.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.
If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
How to Raise your I.Q. by Eating Gifted Children
Someone's boring me. I think it's me.
Now we were descending just as steeply.
Funny business, a woman's career: the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman.
It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most astonishing.
Someone went upside my head again.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
It's wonderful what we can do if we're always doing.
At my lemonade stand I used to give the first glass away free and charge five dollars for the second glass. The refill contained the antidote.
Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
A few seconds later, I tripped over a steel staircase, bashing my shins.
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again.
You always pass failure on the way to success.
You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
The faceless, eyeless armed man above me kept his gun very level.
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
Each body has its art...
The average person thinks he isn't.
I stumbled some, then a hand pushed my head down and I was inside the Hummer.
If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.
I'd never looked down the barrel of a gun before, but everything you've heard about the experience is true.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
The first vehicle that screamed past -- an ambulance -- didn't even slow down.
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
You can't deny laughter. When it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Intimacy is being seen and known as the person you truly are.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
You create your opportunities by asking for them.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
You don't get anything clean without getting something else dirty.
We are what we repeatedly do.
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .
Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.
I ended up stepping on her stomach as the crowd pushed me past her, but by then I don't think she was feeling anything.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
Ask a deeply religious Christian if he?d rather live next to a bearded Muslim that may or may not be plotting a terror attack, or an atheist that may or may not show him how to set up a wireless network in his house. On the scale of prejudice, atheists don?t seem so bad lately.
This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what you?re doing, or it comes out flat. You can?t fake your way through this.
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.
Your world is made of your memories, and your memories are given to you by your world. The whispering voice of happenstance is always in our ears. 'This is the world. This is the way things are. Look. Pay attention. Remember.'
Where facts are few, experts are many.
Intimacy is what makes a marriage, not a ceremony, not a piece of paper from the state.
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
The great art of giving consists in this: the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated.
I barely had time to register them before those rifles were pointed at me.
You can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.
My wish is to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I will not resign myself...
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.
I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.
While we have the gift of life, it seems to me that only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
It's wonderful what we can do if we're always doing.
If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play at it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.
He who laughs, lasts!
Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn?t hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor.
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.
At the mention of the word mace, the guy looked scared and kind of melted back, though the crowd kept him moving forward.
Try to put your happiness before anyone else's, because you may never have done so in your entire life, if you really think about it, if you are really honest with yourself.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
The Past is to be respected and acknoledged, but not to be worshiped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
I felt the doors open near me, and then saw a confusion of booted feet moving close by.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.
Someone went upside my head again.
Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.
Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
They can conquer who believe they can.
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street.
The toughest question has always been, "How do you get your ideas?" How do you answer that? It's like asking runners how they run, or singers how they sing. They just do it!
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself...True happiness is born of self-reliance.
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
Howard Hughes was able to afford the luxury of madness, like a man who not only thinks he is Napoleon but hires an army to prove it.
We cannot destroy kindred: Our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.
Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.
I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.
All movements go too far.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
My home is not a place, it is people.
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
It's never just a game when you're winning.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
If a dog jumps in your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.
It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
No one goes there nowadays, it's too crowded.
The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
You have to recognize when the right place and the right time fuse and take advantage of that opportunity. There are plenty of opportunities out there. You can't sit back and wait.
It's wonderful what we can do if we're always doing.
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
It felt like they used a baton or something -- it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head before.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Intimacy is what makes a marriage, not a ceremony, not a piece of paper from the state.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do.
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.
Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
I felt the doors open near me, and then saw a confusion of booted feet moving close by.
The first vehicle that screamed past -- an ambulance -- didn't even slow down.
Beware the pull on your heartstrings -- it's often the pursestrings that are actually being reached for.
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
He was one of those men who think that the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Worries go down better with soup than without.
Be careful that victories do not carry the seed of future defeats.
Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
Facts are the enemy of truth.
Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
All things are difficult before they are easy.
An idea is salvation by imagination.
I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Make hunger thy sauce, as a medicine for health.
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
The car slewed to a stop and only then did I notice that it wasn't a cop car, ambulance or fire-engine.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.
Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.
Who were these clowns?
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.
I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
You can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.
To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can.
I used to believe that marriage would diminish me, reduce my options. That you had to be someone less to live with someone else when, of course, you have to be someone more.
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.
'Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.' Under the influence of this pestilent morality, I am forever letting tomorrow's work slop backwards into today's, and doing painfully and nervously today what I could do quickly and easily tomorrow.
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
I went up the stairs cautiously, not able to use my hands.
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
You always pass failure on the way to success.
There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
Like anyone else, there are days I feel beautiful and days I don't, and when I don't, I do something about it.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Peace is when time doesn't matter as it passes by.
Optimism and hope are our best friends. Let?s reach out and Laugh together at our confounding traits and still, let?s keep in mind that our sympt oms and traits are very real with consequences, never to be underestimated or discounted.
Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done.
I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Darryl wasn't in good shape -- he was white-faced and panting.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
Go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren't bad people; they're just acquaintances.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let's love turbulence and use it for change.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.
I am doomed to an eternity of compulsive work. No set goal achieved satisfies. Success only breeds a new goal. The golden apple devoured has seeds. It is endless.
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
We've got to get my friend to a hospital --"
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot.
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
I guess we'd be living in a boring, perfect world if everybody wished everybody else well.
A man can do all things if he but wills them.
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.
We rocked to a stop still on a downslope.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
I like coincidences. They make me wonder about destiny, and whether free will is an illusion or just a matter of perspective. They let me speculate on the idea of some master plan that, from time to time, we're allowed to see out of the corner of our eye.
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.
There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.
The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from anybody else.
Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done.
A minute's success pays the failure of years.
There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
It really doesn't matter if the person who hurt you deserves to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. You have things to do and you want to move on.
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
We bear the world and we make it... There was never a great man who had not a great mother - it is hardly an exaggeration.
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
It's a dangerous business going out your front door.
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
I never know how much of what I say is true.
Love truth, and pardon error.
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.
It?s like your batteries get low, and you need to charge them on someone else?s story.
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Do it now. It is not safe to leave a generous feeling to the cooling influences of the world.
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?
'Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.' Under the influence of this pestilent morality, I am forever letting tomorrow's work slop backwards into today's, and doing painfully and nervously today what I could do quickly and easily tomorrow.
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
Sack over my head and cinched it tight around my windpipe.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
I'd never looked down the barrel of a gun before, but everything you've heard about the experience is true.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.
At my lemonade stand I used to give the first glass away free and charge five dollars for the second glass. The refill contained the antidote.
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.
It is not much for its beauty that makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
There are two types of people--those who come into a room and say, 'Well, here I am!' and those who come in and say, 'Ah, there you are.'
What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty.
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
More movement, and the sense of bodies being shackled in alongside of me.
Your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.
Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
The undertaking of a new action brings new strength.
Better by far you should forget and smile than you should remember and be sad.
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.
Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?
I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
I have the worst memory ever so no matter who comes up to me - they're just, like, 'I can't believe you don't remember me!" I'm like, 'Oh Dad I'm sorry!'
If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play at it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.
Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.
Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.
Sitting in the back of that Hummer, my head in a hood, my hands lashed behind my back, lurching back and forth while the bruises swelled up on my head, terrorism suddenly felt a lot riskier.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
If there's one thing I know it's God does love a good joke.
Intimacy is what makes a marriage, not a ceremony, not a piece of paper from the state.
Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.
Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
Worries go down better with soup than without.
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.
They can conquer who believe they can.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
It's never just a game when you're winning.
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
I was in total darkness now and I strained my ears to hear what was going on with my friends.
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extrordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. The transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse.
The only difference between a rut and a grave... is in their dimensions.
I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
You have to have funny faces and words, you can't just have words. It is a powerful thing, and I think that's why it's hard for people to imagine that women can do that, be that powerful.
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
To try to be better is to be better.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.
Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.
We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
I mean, I knew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world, but they didn't really represent any risk to me.
Keep cool and you command everybody.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
You freeze where you are, time stops, and your heart thunders in your ears.
A poem is no place for an idea.
There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?
To try to be better is to be better.
True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.
Fresh clean sheets are one of life's small joys.
Our lives teach us who we are.
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
Our lives teach us who we are.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
Sometimes love will pick you up by the short hairs...and jerk the heck out of you.
The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.
This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what you?re doing, or it comes out flat. You can?t fake your way through this.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Think of life as a terminal illness, because, if you do, you will live it with joy and passion, as it ought to be lived.
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
We cannot destroy kindred: Our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break.
Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
I feel like a tiny bird with a big song!
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.
She screamed as she went down, and I saw her thrashing to get up, but she couldn't, the crowd's pressure was too strong.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
I'm glad I didn't have to fight in any war. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up a gun. I'm glad I didn't get killed or kill somebody. I hope my kids enjoy the same lack of manhood.
You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.
The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.
As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things.
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
We play the hands of cards life gives us. And the worst hands can make us the best players.
The crowd gives the leader new strength.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.
Eat a third and drink a third and leave the remaining third of your stomach empty. Then, when you get angry, there will be sufficient room for your rage.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
I phoned my dad to tell him I had stopped smoking. He called me a quitter.
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
The faceless, eyeless armed man above me kept his gun very level.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
Our lives teach us who we are.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
Even the best of friends need time apart.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
I was not a child prodigy, because a child prodigy is a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up.
How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
Make hunger thy sauce, as a medicine for health.
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
Confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can have. It's much sexier than any body part.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
If you're trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it's a lot easier to hit your targets if you don't yell going through the door.
To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
The crowd gives the leader new strength.
Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
You need only claim the event of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.
When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves.
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
The only difference between a rut and a grave... is in their dimensions.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
My eyes swam and watered and I literally couldn't breathe through the pain.
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
You freeze where you are, time stops, and your heart thunders in your ears.
I shouted, and earned a hard thump on my head for my trouble.
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
Men of genius do not excel in any profession because they labor in it, but they labor in it because they excel.
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.
To try to be better is to be better.
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Never make a defense or an apology until you are accused.
I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.
Beware the pull on your heartstrings -- it's often the pursestrings that are actually being reached for.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.
Someone dragged me by my arms out onto the road, then shoved me, stumbling, down a paved road.
It is easier to exclude harmful passions than to rule them, and to deny them admittance than to control them after they have been admitted.
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Up ahead, I saw someone, a middle-aged lady in a hippie dress, falter and fall.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
A man without ambition is dead. A man with ambition but no love is dead. A man with ambition and love for his blessings here on earth is ever so alive. Having been alive, it won't be so hard in the end to lie down and rest.
You cannot be mad at somebody who makes you laugh - it's as simple as that.
Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
There isn?t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren?t really living without it.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
By learning to discover and value our ordinariness, we nurture a friendliness toward ourselves and the world that is the essence of a healthy soul.
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
They can conquer who believe they can.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Funny business, a woman's career: the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman.
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Nothing is said that has not been said before.
I heard Jolu respond, then felt the thump he was dealt, too.
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it.
I ended up stepping on her stomach as the crowd pushed me past her, but by then I don't think she was feeling anything.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
Fresh clean sheets are one of life's small joys.
Some people make headlines while others make history.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
There isn?t much better in this life than finding a way to spend a few hours in conversation with people you respect and love. You have to carve this time out of your life because you aren?t really living without it.
I wanted to flag you down because my friend was bleeding. Someone stabbed him."
It felt like they used a baton or something -- it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head before.
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
The faceless, eyeless armed man above me kept his gun very level.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Never make a defense or an apology until you are accused.
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people who are convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.
It felt like they used a baton or something -- it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head before.
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.
It?s like your batteries get low, and you need to charge them on someone else?s story.
Is there life before death?
A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.
Sometimes love will pick you up by the short hairs...and jerk the heck out of you.
You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we're more likely to be changed by it.
Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble.
They can conquer who believe they can.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.
Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
I'm glad I didn't have to fight in any war. I'm glad I didn't have to pick up a gun. I'm glad I didn't get killed or kill somebody. I hope my kids enjoy the same lack of manhood.
Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
Like anyone else, there are days I feel beautiful and days I don't, and when I don't, I do something about it.
You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Sitting in the back of that Hummer, my head in a hood, my hands lashed behind my back, lurching back and forth while the bruises swelled up on my head, terrorism suddenly felt a lot riskier.
I like to play blackjack. I'm not addicted to gambling, I'm addicted to sitting in a semi-circle.
Try to put your happiness before anyone else's, because you may never have done so in your entire life, if you really think about it, if you are really honest with yourself.
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.
Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts.
If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.
Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.
For the night was not impartial. No, the night loved some more than others, served some more than others.
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
Go often to the house of thy friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path.
Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side.
Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they'll be called on to do before the next chance.