I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.
You always pass failure on the way to success.
More bodies were roughly shoved in beside me.
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim".
Be more prompt to go to a friend in adversity than in prosperity.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
I say luck is when an opportunity comes along, and you're prepared for it.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
Anger is never without Reason, but seldom with a good One.
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.
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.
Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
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.
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
Is there life before death?
The Past is to be respected and acknoledged, but not to be worshiped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.
Keep cool and you command everybody.
Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
You freeze where you are, time stops, and your heart thunders in your ears.
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
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.
Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted.
Maybe they were terrorists!
I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.
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!
Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
It's all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation.
In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
Feet, why do I need them if I have wings to fly?
Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing.
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.'
When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.
Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
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.
Van's sweater was soaked in blood.
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?
Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
Like anyone else, there are days I feel beautiful and days I don't, and when I don't, I do something about it.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
My eyes swam and watered and I literally couldn't breathe through the pain.
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done.
I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporaly out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
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.
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.
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.
Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey.
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.
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.
Make a decision, even if it's wrong.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
I am not young enough to know everything.
If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
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.
It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
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.
Anger at lies lasts forever. Anger at truth can't last.
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
You can't deny laughter. When it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.
My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
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.
Music is essentially useless, as life is.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
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.
Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
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.
Things are only impossible until they're not.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
Make hunger thy sauce, as a medicine for health.
We do not believe if we do not live and work according to our belief.
Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.
A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is all that is left him.
I stand in awe of my body.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
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.
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.
Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
We are what we repeatedly do.
The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in this business. You've got to keep on working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there.
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
I guess we'd be living in a boring, perfect world if everybody wished everybody else well.
Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.
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.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.
There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.
Feeling grateful to or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life.
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.
Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.
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.
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey.
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.
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
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.
Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts.
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.
Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.
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.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
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.
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.
We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.
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.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
He who boasts of his ancestry is praising the deeds of another.
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
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.
A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.
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.
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.
Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
I feel like a tiny bird with a big song!
They can conquer who believe they can.
Maybe the most any of us can expect of ourselves isn't perfection but progress.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
We've got to get my friend to a hospital --"
Is love supposed to last throughout all time, or is it like trains changing at random stops. If I loved her, how could I leave her? If I felt that way then, how come I don't feel anything now?
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
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.
If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot.
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.
I think people want their illusions and writers are mostly illusion. When you read their words, you read a flattened, incomplete version of the writer.
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
Things are only impossible until they're not.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
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 truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.
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.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
If my mental map was right, we were heading down to Fisherman's Wharf.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself.
Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune.
There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
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.
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
I felt the doors open near me, and then saw a confusion of booted feet moving close by.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
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.
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
Let me tell you, quite frankly, it took a while and a lot of therapy to get here.
Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law.
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.
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
I felt the doors open near me, and then saw a confusion of booted feet moving close by.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
I stumbled some, then a hand pushed my head down and I was inside the Hummer.
Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
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.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Worries go down better with soup than without.
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.
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
If there's one thing I know it's God does love a good joke.
But be, as you have been, my happiness...
Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
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.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.
The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
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.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
It's important to begin a search on a full stomach.
Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
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.
Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let's love turbulence and use it for change.
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.
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
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.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.
My home is not a place, it is people.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.
A smiling face is half the meal.
Depend not on fortune, but on conduct.
We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
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.
Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.
A poem is no place for an idea.
A smiling face is half the meal.
When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
Do not envy a sinner; you don't know what disaster awaits him.
I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.
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?
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.
It was a military-looking Jeep, like an armored Hummer, only it didn't have any military insignia on it.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
I didn't even breathe.
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.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Someone dragged me by my arms out onto the road, then shoved me, stumbling, down a paved road.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Feeling grateful to or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life.
Intimacy is being seen and known as the person you truly are.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
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.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.
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.
The crowd gives the leader new strength.
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
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.
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.
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.
If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.
For visions come not to polluted eyes.
You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do.
The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Experience is a good teacher, but she send in terrific bills.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.
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.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
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.
Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.
Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches per sec.
You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.
I kept talking. "Listen -- this is some kind of misunderstanding.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
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 happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
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.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
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.
I guess we'd be living in a boring, perfect world if everybody wished everybody else well.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.
A joke's a very serious thing.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
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.
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
Intimacy is being seen and known as the person you truly are.
It?s like your batteries get low, and you need to charge them on someone else?s story.
Worries go down better with soup than without.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.
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.
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
I phoned my dad to tell him I had stopped smoking. He called me a quitter.
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.
I didn't even breathe.
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
Neither did the cop car that went past, nor the firetruck, nor the next three cop-cars.
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
Walking is man's best medicine.
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
It is my hope that I can assist you in getting here too.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
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.
Never make a defense or an apology until you are accused.
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
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.
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
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.
What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
It's not the hours you put in your work that counts, it's the work you put in the hours.
A joke's a very serious thing.
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.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
I am not young enough to know everything.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
Depend not on fortune, but on conduct.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
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.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
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.
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.
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.
Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
Well done is better than well said.
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.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
All movements go too far.
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
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.
The only difference between a rut and a grave... is in their dimensions.
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
The average person thinks he isn't.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
I cried out and my own voice was muffled by the hood.
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
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.'
Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Maybe they were terrorists!
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
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.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
I heard Jolu respond, then felt the thump he was dealt, too.
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Never let the demands of tomorrow interfere with the pleasures and excitement of today.
Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.
Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
The average person thinks he isn't.
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 first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
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.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
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.
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.
I shouted, and earned a hard thump on my head for my trouble.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?
You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.
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.
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
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.
You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
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.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
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.
You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
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.
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
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 great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
I'd learned my lesson.
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.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
There ain't no free lunches in this country. And don't go spending your whole life commiserating that you got raw deals. You've got to say, 'I think that if I keep working at this and want it bad enough I can have it.'
Vigorous writing is concise.
Cheerfulness, it would appear, is a matter which depends fully as much on the state of things within, as on the state of things without and around us.
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.
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
Some people make headlines while others make history.
I kept talking. "Listen -- this is some kind of misunderstanding.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
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.
We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.
Walking is man's best medicine.
People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.
We don't get offered crises, they arrive.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
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.
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.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Go often to the house of thy friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path.
I cried out and my own voice was muffled by the hood.
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
Learn the art of patience. Apply discipline to your thoughts when they become anxious over the outcome of a goal. Impatience breeds anxiety, fear, discouragement and failure. Patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.
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.
God creates men, but they choose each other.
Is there life before death?
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
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.
Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
None are so busy as the fool and knave.
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.
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.
In the absences of a decent time machine, fiction remains the most sturdy vehicle for visiting other eras.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
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.
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.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.
Starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia -- that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
I was in total darkness now and I strained my ears to hear what was going on with my friends.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
We don't get offered crises, they arrive.
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.
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
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.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
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.
There ain't no free lunches in this country. And don't go spending your whole life commiserating that you got raw deals. You've got to say, 'I think that if I keep working at this and want it bad enough I can have it.'
Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
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?
Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get.
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Our lives teach us who we are.
Up ahead, I saw someone, a middle-aged lady in a hippie dress, falter and fall.
Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.
Books...are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.
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 real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.
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."
There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
He was one of those men who think that the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet.
Neither did the cop car that went past, nor the firetruck, nor the next three cop-cars.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
I cried out and my own voice was muffled by the hood.
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.
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field - and keep on doing it.
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
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.
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.
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
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.
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.
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 went up the stairs cautiously, not able to use my hands.
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.
The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
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.
The trick is to make sure you don't die waiting for prosperity to come.
So quick and so fiercely I barely had time to gasp before it was locked on me.
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.
If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
You can't deny laughter. When it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.
Let not thy will roar, when thy power can but whisper.
We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.
He who laughs, lasts!
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
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 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.
Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
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.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
Walking is man's best medicine.
Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
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.
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.
The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
The Past is to be respected and acknoledged, but not to be worshiped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.
If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.
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 problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex--but Congress can.
I'd never looked down the barrel of a gun before, but everything you've heard about the experience is true.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
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.
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.
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
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.
Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.
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.
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.
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 place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
Speak when you are angry--and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.
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.
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.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
We rocked to a stop still on a downslope.
I kept talking. "Listen -- this is some kind of misunderstanding.
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.
Never eat more than you can lift.
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.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
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?m telling you, things are getting out of hand. Or maybe I?m discovering that things were never in my hands.
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.
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.
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
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.
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
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.
For me, it's that I contributed, ... That I'm on this planet doing some good and making people happy. That's to me the most important thing, that my hour of television is positive and upbeat and an antidote for all the negative stuff going on in life.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
I say luck is when an opportunity comes along, and you're prepared for it.
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.
In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
I felt the doors open near me, and then saw a confusion of booted feet moving close by.
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.
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 your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
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.
Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
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.
Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.
Sack over my head and cinched it tight around my windpipe.
I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.
I don't believe in intuition. When you get sudden flashes of perception, it is just the brain working faster than usual. But you've been getting ready to know it for a long time, and when it comes, you feel you've known it always.
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Never make a defense or an apology until you are accused.
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?
Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.
A smiling face is half the meal.
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
If it weren't for baseball, many kids wouldn't know what a millionaire looked like.
Van was screaming something and Jolu was shouting and I looked at them for a second and that was when someone put a coarse.
Art is science made clear.
A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.
See things as they are and write about them. Don?t waste your creative energy trying to make things up. Even if you are writing fiction, write the things you see and know.
Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.
I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.
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.
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
We are made to persist. That's how we find out who we are.
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
I had no idea how much of this was making it through the muffling bag.
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 more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.
The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success. Talent is only a starting point in this business. You've got to keep on working that talent. Someday I'll reach for it and it won't be there.
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
No.
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune.
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Someone dragged me by my arms out onto the road, then shoved me, stumbling, down a paved road.
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
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.
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 cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!
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 the most part, fear is nothing but an illusion. When you share it with someone else, it tends to disappear.
The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law.
Speak when you are angry--and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.
By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we're more likely to be changed by it.
Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
My wish is to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I will not resign myself...
At the mention of the word mace, the guy looked scared and kind of melted back, though the crowd kept him moving forward.
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.
Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.
Speak when you are angry--and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
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.
The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.
We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.
It's a dangerous business going out your front door.
Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.
The car slewed to a stop and only then did I notice that it wasn't a cop car, ambulance or fire-engine.
Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.
Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
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.
See things as they are and write about them. Don?t waste your creative energy trying to make things up. Even if you are writing fiction, write the things you see and know.
A poem is no place for an idea.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
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.
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.
Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.
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 I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
I'd learned my lesson.
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
Intimacy is being seen and known as the person you truly are.
To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains.
For the most part, fear is nothing but an illusion. When you share it with someone else, it tends to disappear.
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
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.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Now we were descending just as steeply.
We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
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.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
My home is not a place, it is people.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
An idea is salvation by imagination.
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 guess we'd be living in a boring, perfect world if everybody wished everybody else well.
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.
If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
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.
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
Van was screaming something and Jolu was shouting and I looked at them for a second and that was when someone put a coarse.
So quick and so fiercely I barely had time to gasp before it was locked on me.
It is my hope that I can assist you in getting here too.
Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
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.
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.
I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
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.
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
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.
You should not live one way in private, another in public.
My home is not a place, it is people.
I was in total darkness now and I strained my ears to hear what was going on with my friends.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
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.
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.
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.
Let me tell you, quite frankly, it took a while and a lot of therapy to get here.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
You don't stop laughing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing.
You create your opportunities by asking for them.