Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
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.
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim".
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.
A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing."
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
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.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
The crowd gives the leader new strength.
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.
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
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.
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.
We inhereit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted... Each of us contains within... this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Do not be awe struck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can.
Go often to the house of thy friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path.
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
Darryl wasn't in good shape -- he was white-faced and panting.
Van was screaming something and Jolu was shouting and I looked at them for a second and that was when someone put a coarse.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
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.
Terrorists killed a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions.
If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot.
The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change.
You create your opportunities by asking for them.
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.
The average person thinks he isn't.
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
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!'
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
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.
Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them.
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.
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
The undertaking of a new action brings new strength.
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty.
For the night was not impartial. No, the night loved some more than others, served some more than others.
More bodies were roughly shoved in beside me.
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
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.
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
I went up the stairs cautiously, not able to use my hands.
It is fortunate to be of high birth, but it is no less so to be of such character that people do not care to know whether you are or are not.
He had learned over the years that poor people did not feel so poor when allowed to give occasionally.
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
He who laughs, lasts!
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
The engine died and then the doors swung open.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
As I neared her, I bent to help her up, and was nearly knocked over her.
Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.
Your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
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.
When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is all that is left him.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, 'It all depends on me.'
We've got to get my friend to a hospital --"
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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.
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
If we fall, we don't need self-recrimination or blame or anger - we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to recommit, to be whole-hearted once again.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Maybe they were terrorists!
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
The undertaking of a new action brings new strength.
O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
'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.
There is an applause superior to that of the multitudes: one's own.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
You create your opportunities by asking for them.
Make hunger thy sauce, as a medicine for health.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
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.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
Intimacy is what makes a marriage, not a ceremony, not a piece of paper from the state.
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.
I wrote myself a check for ten million dollars for acting services rendered and dated it Thanksgiving 1995. I put it in my wallet and it deteriorated. And then, just before Thanksgiving 1995, I found out I was going to make ten million dollars for Dumb & Dumber. I put that check in the casket with my father because it was our dream together.
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
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 say luck is when an opportunity comes along, and you're prepared for it.
You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.
Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
Beware the pull on your heartstrings -- it's often the pursestrings that are actually being reached for.
Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.
I like weights. You know where you stand with them. Well, sometimes you're lying under them, trying not to let them crush you, but you see, you KNOW they'd crush you if they could. There's honesty.
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.
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Truth has beauty, power and necessity.
I strained around against the crowd and saw Van looking with disgust at an older guy in a nice suit who was kind of smirking at her. She was digging in her purse and I knew what she was digging for.
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.
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
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.
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
For visions come not to polluted eyes.
Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
The car rocked back and forth and tipped uphill.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
It's a dangerous business going out your front door.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.
We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.
But be, as you have been, my happiness...
Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done.
It was a military-looking Jeep, like an armored Hummer, only it didn't have any military insignia on it.
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.
I like to play blackjack. I'm not addicted to gambling, I'm addicted to sitting in a semi-circle.
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
If there is one thing worse than being an ugly duckling in a house of swans, it's having the swans pretend there's no difference.
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.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.
A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
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.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.
I am not young enough to know everything.
What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living.
Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
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.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
You always pass failure on the way to success.
We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
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.
The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.
This world is given as the prize for the men in earnest; and that which is true of this world, is truer still of the world to come.
The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field - and keep on doing it.
A smiling face is half the meal.
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is.
Worries go down better with soup than without.
Up ahead, I saw someone, a middle-aged lady in a hippie dress, falter and fall.
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
What children take from us, they give?We become people who feel more deeply, question more deeply, hurt more deeply, and love more deeply.
My eyes swam and watered and I literally couldn't breathe through the pain.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
Sometimes love will pick you up by the short hairs...and jerk the heck out of you.
Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted.
I opened my mouth, then shut it, then, very slowly, I held my hands up in front of me.
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
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.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
My head rang like a gong.
The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change.
Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
The hands behind me gave me another shove.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
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.
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.
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
As a scientist, I am not sure anymore that life can be reduced to a class struggle, to dialectical materialism, or any set of formulas. Life is spontaneous and it is unpredictable, it is magical. I think that we have struggled so hard with the tangible that we have forgotten the intangible.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
When we got into office, the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were.
The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out. Every mind is a building filled with archaic furniture. Clean out a corner of your mind and creativity will instantly fill it.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
A poem is no place for an idea.
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
I don't like composers who think. It gets in the way of their plagiarism.
Sometimes you can't see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others.
Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.
If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot.
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.
You should not live one way in private, another in public.
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
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.
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.
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle.
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.
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
I don't generally feel anything until noon; then it's time for my nap.
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
We've got to get my friend to a hospital --"
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
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.
I use an optimistic, positive approach to deal with my symptoms and it came the hard way, before I learned to laugh with myself a little.
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.
If you want to be respected, you must respect yourself.
Do not be awe struck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can.
Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
The Past is to be respected and acknoledged, but not to be worshiped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.
Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.
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.
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
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.
If there is one thing worse than being an ugly duckling in a house of swans, it's having the swans pretend there's no difference.
God creates men, but they choose each other.
We inhereit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted... Each of us contains within... this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise.
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.
Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.
Is there life before death?
So little time and so little to do.
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.
Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.
Someone went upside my head again.
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches per sec.
How we remember, what we remember and why we remember form the most personal map of our individuality.
Memory feeds imagination.
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
The undertaking of a new action brings new strength.
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.
Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
Turn the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
A smiling face is half the meal.
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
If we fall, we don't need self-recrimination or blame or anger - we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to recommit, to be whole-hearted once again.
You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
How we treasure (and admire) the people who acknowledge us!
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
The engine died and then the doors swung open.
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
Laughter is supposed to be the best medicine, however, it should never be at the expense of someone?s feelings or ignoring truth.
I went up the stairs cautiously, not able to use my hands.
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
I lived what most people call the good life. I was happy, but deep inside I always felt that, with the short amount of time we are given to live and love in this world, we spend too much time loving things instead of people.
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
Make a decision, even if it's wrong.
You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.
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.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
People were still cramming down the stairs, and more were squeezing past the turnstiles and down the escalators onto the platforms, but it was clear to me that this wasn't going to have a happy ending.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
Love truth, and pardon error.
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
There is an applause superior to that of the multitudes: one's own.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
Life is consciousness.
People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
He had learned over the years that poor people did not feel so poor when allowed to give occasionally.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.
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.
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend.
Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
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.
...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Who were these clowns?
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.
I looked up and saw a bunch of military-looking guys in coveralls, holding big, bulky rifles and wearing hooded gas masks with tinted face-plates.
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.
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
At the mention of the word mace, the guy looked scared and kind of melted back, though the crowd kept him moving forward.
Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts.
I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.
So quick and so fiercely I barely had time to gasp before it was locked on me.
'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.
I looked up and saw a bunch of military-looking guys in coveralls, holding big, bulky rifles and wearing hooded gas masks with tinted face-plates.
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.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else.
The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let's love turbulence and use it for change.
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.
You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.
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.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is all that is left him.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
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.
The average person thinks he isn't.
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.
What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.
There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
I like weights. You know where you stand with them. Well, sometimes you're lying under them, trying not to let them crush you, but you see, you KNOW they'd crush you if they could. There's honesty.
The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.
If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
Feet, why do I need them if I have wings to fly?
We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.
Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.
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.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Never let the demands of tomorrow interfere with the pleasures and excitement of today.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
I stand in awe of my body.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
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.
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.
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
You can only cure retail but you can prevent .
The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it.
A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is all that is left him.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
If you want to be respected, you must respect yourself.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
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.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
More movement, and the sense of bodies being shackled in alongside of me.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Anger at lies lasts forever. Anger at truth can't last.
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
Things are only impossible until they're not.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
People fail forward to success.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.
You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.
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.
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
Whatever you fear most has no power - it is your fear that has the power.
Sometimes you can't see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.
When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.
She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
In the absences of a decent time machine, fiction remains the most sturdy vehicle for visiting other eras.
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.
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.
My eyes swam and watered and I literally couldn't breathe through the pain.
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
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.
Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
We were in the open concourse where the turnstiles were. It was hardly any better here -- the enclosed space sent the voices around us echoing back in a roar that made my head ring, and the smell and feeling of all those bodies made me feel a claustrophobia I'd never known I was prone to.
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
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.
I've grown to realize the joy that comes from little victories is preferable to the fun that comes from ease and the pursuit of pleasure.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.
The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
We do not believe if we do not live and work according to our belief.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it.
Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
I don't think about risks much. I just do what I want to do. If you gotta go, you gotta go.
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
If you really do put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.
O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
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.
A minute's success pays the failure of years.
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
The best way out is always through.
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
But be, as you have been, my happiness...
Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
You never find yourself until you face the truth.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
We inhereit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted... Each of us contains within... this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise.
The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.
What's the earth With all its art, verse, music, worth - Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?
If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.
There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
'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.
It's never just a game when you're winning.
You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
Feet, why do I need them if I have wings to fly?
I feel like a tiny bird with a big song!
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.
There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
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 faceless, eyeless armed man above me kept his gun very level.
Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
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.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
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.
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
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.
It's wonderful what we can do if we're always doing.
Sometimes you can't see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others.
Turn the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.
The Past is to be respected and acknoledged, but not to be worshiped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.
Better by far you should forget and smile than you should remember and be sad.
I nearly fell again, but new hands grabbed me from in front and dragged me down a steel floor and then forced me to my knees and locked my hands to something behind me.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
A few seconds later, I tripped over a steel staircase, bashing my shins.
I cried out and my own voice was muffled by the hood.
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.
Nothing is said that has not been said before.
Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
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.
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
A moment later, I caught my breath, but I didn't say anything.
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
It was a military-looking Jeep, like an armored Hummer, only it didn't have any military insignia on it.
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.
Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.
As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things.
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.
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
'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.
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is.
In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?
I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
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.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
For the most part, fear is nothing but an illusion. When you share it with someone else, it tends to disappear.
To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.
Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
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.
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
I define comfort as self-acceptance. When we finally learn that self-care begins and ends with ourselves, we no longer demand sustenance and happiness from others.
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
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.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
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 always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents.
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
It's wonderful what we can do if we're always doing.
Some people make headlines while others make history.
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
If we fall, we don't need self-recrimination or blame or anger - we need a reawakening of our intention and a willingness to recommit, to be whole-hearted once again.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
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.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
I wanted to flag you down because my friend was bleeding. Someone stabbed him."
I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it.
If there's one thing I know it's God does love a good joke.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny 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 work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
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.
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
A poem is no place for an idea.
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
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.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
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.
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
It is my hope that I can assist you in getting here too.
Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in life.
Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
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.
People fail forward to success.
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.
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, 'It all depends on me.'
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.
The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
Some people make headlines while others make history.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
I looked up and saw a bunch of military-looking guys in coveralls, holding big, bulky rifles and wearing hooded gas masks with tinted face-plates.
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else.
Beware the pull on your heartstrings -- it's often the pursestrings that are actually being reached for.
Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts.
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
He who laughs, lasts!
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
You should not live one way in private, another in public.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
I use an optimistic, positive approach to deal with my symptoms and it came the hard way, before I learned to laugh with myself a little.
Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
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.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Each body has its art...
We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.
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.
Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
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.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
Whenever evil befalls us, we ought to ask ourselves, after the first suffering, how we can turn it into good. So shall we take occasion, from one bitter root, to raise perhaps many flowers.
You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.
I guess we'd be living in a boring, perfect world if everybody wished everybody else well.
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.
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
The undertaking of a new action brings new strength.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content
You always pass failure on the way to success.
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .
I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extrordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
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.
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
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.
Experience is a good teacher, but she send in terrific bills.
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.
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
I don't generally feel anything until noon; then it's time for my nap.
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.
I believe that every now and then it is important to laugh at ourselves and take a lighter approach to our life conditions.
You're dealing with the demon of external validation. You can't beat external validation. You want to know why? Because it feels sooo good.
A moment later, I caught my breath, but I didn't say anything.
The car slewed to a stop and only then did I notice that it wasn't a cop car, ambulance or fire-engine.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content
All things are difficult before they are easy.
I cried out and my own voice was muffled by the hood.
His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
We play the hands of cards life gives us. And the worst hands can make us the best players.
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
Don't mace him!" I shouted over the din. "You'll get us all too.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
I feel like a tiny bird with a big song!
Never eat more than you can lift.
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.
Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.
Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble.
It felt like they used a baton or something -- it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head before.
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
My eyes swam and watered and I literally couldn't breathe through the pain.
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top .
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
I kept talking. "Listen -- this is some kind of misunderstanding.
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
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.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
You freeze where you are, time stops, and your heart thunders in your ears.
I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.
Your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.
I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.
You're dealing with the demon of external validation. You can't beat external validation. You want to know why? Because it feels sooo good.
I opened my mouth, then shut it, then, very slowly, I held my hands up in front of me.
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.
Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.
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.
She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.
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.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
I don't think about risks much. I just do what I want to do. If you gotta go, you gotta go.
The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
I had no idea how much of this was making it through the muffling bag.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from anybody else.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
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.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
I don't like composers who think. It gets in the way of their plagiarism.
I phoned my dad to tell him I had stopped smoking. He called me a quitter.
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.
Each body has its art...
Nothing is said that has not been said before.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Never eat more than you can lift.
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.
Laughter is supposed to be the best medicine, however, it should never be at the expense of someone?s feelings or ignoring truth.
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
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?
When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.
Like anyone else, there are days I feel beautiful and days I don't, and when I don't, I do something about it.
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
Anger is never without Reason, but seldom with a good One.
Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.
Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
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.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
People fail forward to success.
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.
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.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in life.
There is an applause superior to that of the multitudes: one's own.
The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
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.
Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
A joke's a very serious thing.
Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process.