If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.
If you really do put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
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.
All movements go too far.
But be, as you have been, my happiness...
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.
Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
All things are difficult before they are easy.
Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
A smiling face is half the meal.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
I gathered we were headed over Nob Hill, and from the angle, it seemed we were taking one of the steeper routes.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
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.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
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 could get on a boat there, get away. That fit with the terrorism hypothesis.
Typos are very important to all written form. It gives the reader something to look for so they aren't distracted by the total lack of content in your writing.
Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
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.
Intimacy is being seen and known as the person you truly are.
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
I wanted to flag you down because my friend was bleeding. Someone stabbed him."
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
The engine died and then the doors swung open.
I didn't even breathe.
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!
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
He who boasts of his ancestry is praising the deeds of another.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
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.
Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
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 movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
You can learn as much - or more - from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.
A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
You should not live one way in private, another in public.
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.
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.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent 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.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
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.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
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.
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.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.
If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the last one left.
If there's one thing I know it's God does love a good joke.
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. The transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Anger at lies lasts forever. Anger at truth can't last.
Maybe they were terrorists!
It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way.
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
We cannot destroy kindred: Our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break.
You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.
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.
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
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.
It felt like they used a baton or something -- it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head before.
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
I felt the doors open near me, and then saw a confusion of booted feet moving close by.
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Do not envy a sinner; you don't know what disaster awaits him.
Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.
I was sick of cars driving right past me.
Peace is when time doesn't matter as it passes by.
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
I'd never looked down the barrel of a gun before, but everything you've heard about the experience is true.
If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
My friends are my estate.
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
The Past is to be respected and acknoledged, but not to be worshiped. It is our future in which we will find our greatness.
It's very hard to take yourself too seriously when you look at the world from outer space.
My friends are my estate.
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 writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.
So little time and so little to do.
I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
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.
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.
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.
The first vehicle that screamed past -- an ambulance -- didn't even slow down.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the 'ah-ha'.
You never find yourself until you face the truth.
There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.
Having a holiday weekend without a family member felt like putting on a sweater that had an extra arm.
It felt like they used a baton or something -- it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head before.
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
It's important to begin a search on a full stomach.
All movements go too far.
The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
I never know how much of what I say is true.
Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
Better by far you should forget and smile than you should remember and be sad.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it.
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
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.
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.
Darryl wasn't in good shape -- he was white-faced and panting.
Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.
It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.
If my mental map was right, we were heading down to Fisherman's Wharf.
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.
Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.
Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.
Is there life before death?
The first vehicle that screamed past -- an ambulance -- didn't even slow down.
The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the last one left.
We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
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 most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
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.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
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.
It's never just a game when you're winning.
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune.
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
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 nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change.
Maybe the most any of us can expect of ourselves isn't perfection but progress.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
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.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
If you really do put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
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.
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing.
The hands behind me gave me another shove.
You cannot be mad at somebody who makes you laugh - it's as simple as that.
There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
In the absences of a decent time machine, fiction remains the most sturdy vehicle for visiting other eras.
The car skidded to a stop just in front of me, and I jumped back and lost my balance and ended up on the road.
I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.
The roses, the lovely notes, the dining and dancing are all welcome and splendid. But when the Godiva is gone, the gift of real love is having someone who'll go the distance with you. Someone who, when the wedding day limo breaks down, is willing to share a seat on the bus.
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
The next time a car appeared down Market Street, I stepped right out into the road, waving my arms over my head, shouting.
Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
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.
You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
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.'
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Feet, why do I need them if I have wings to fly?
The trick is to make sure you don't die waiting for prosperity to come.
A smiling face is half the meal.
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
The car rocked back and forth and tipped uphill.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
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.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
A poem is no place for an idea.
The engine died and then the doors swung open.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
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.
We don't get offered crises, they arrive.
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.
Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. The transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse.
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.
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
My home is not a place, it is people.
All things are difficult before they are easy.
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.
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
I gathered we were headed over Nob Hill, and from the angle, it seemed we were taking one of the steeper routes.
One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
My home is not a place, it is people.
When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.
Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extrordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
I was sick of cars driving right past me.
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.
A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.
Act as if it were impossible to fail.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
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.
The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.
Some people make headlines while others make history.
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
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.
No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex--but Congress can.
Make a decision, even if it's wrong.
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
The only difference between a rut and a grave... is in their dimensions.
There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.
The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
More movement, and the sense of bodies being shackled in alongside of me.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
But be, as you have been, my happiness...
It's takin' whatever comes your way, the good AND the bad, that give life flavor. It's all the stuff rolled together that makes life worth livin'.
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.
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Do not be awe struck by other people and try to copy them. Nobody can be you as efficiently as you can.
Use what you have to run toward your best - that's how I now live my life.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'
To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains.
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.
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
I kept talking. "Listen -- this is some kind of misunderstanding.
Photographers do this for a living, every single day -- they point their lenses toward every single corner of our world and somehow make the mundane mesmerizing through their artistic eye. It's all a matter of being aware of your surroundings and realizing that there are some really amazing and interesting things to look at, even if it may just be something so simple as a wall being covered up by paint.
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
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.
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover 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.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.
If it weren't for baseball, many kids wouldn't know what a millionaire looked like.
The faceless, eyeless armed man above me kept his gun very level.
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
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.
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content
Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
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.
I don't like composers who think. It gets in the way of their plagiarism.
You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.
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.
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
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.
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
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.
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
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.
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.
Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it.
Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.
Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.
We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can.
I believe that every now and then it is important to laugh at ourselves and take a lighter approach to our life conditions.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
I was sick of cars driving right past me.
Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
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.
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.
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
Photographers do this for a living, every single day -- they point their lenses toward every single corner of our world and somehow make the mundane mesmerizing through their artistic eye. It's all a matter of being aware of your surroundings and realizing that there are some really amazing and interesting things to look at, even if it may just be something so simple as a wall being covered up by paint.
The trick is to make sure you don't die waiting for prosperity to come.
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 dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
What's the earth With all its art, verse, music, worth - Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?
Your world is made of your memories, and your memories are given to you by your world. The whispering voice of happenstance is always in our ears. 'This is the world. This is the way things are. Look. Pay attention. Remember.'
Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.
You have to recognize when the right place and the right time fuse and take advantage of that opportunity. There are plenty of opportunities out there. You can't sit back and wait.
It's very hard to take yourself too seriously when you look at the world from outer space.
Your world is made of your memories, and your memories are given to you by your world. The whispering voice of happenstance is always in our ears. 'This is the world. This is the way things are. Look. Pay attention. Remember.'
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
The trick is to make sure you don't die waiting for prosperity to come.
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.
Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.
The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
The car rocked back and forth and tipped uphill.
Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone.
The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. The transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse.
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.
Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.
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.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
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.
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.
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.
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?
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Walking is man's best medicine.
Before we set our hearts too much upon anything, let us examine how happy those are who already possess it.
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
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.
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.
Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them.
I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.
...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
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.
Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
The only difference between a rut and a grave... is in their dimensions.
If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.
Confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can have. It's much sexier than any body part.
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
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.
My wish is to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I will not resign myself...
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.
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
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.
Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey.
It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
I?m telling you, things are getting out of hand. Or maybe I?m discovering that things were never in my hands.
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.
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it.
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
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.
Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.
The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from anybody else.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.
Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.
No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
Your world is made of your memories, and your memories are given to you by your world. The whispering voice of happenstance is always in our ears. 'This is the world. This is the way things are. Look. Pay attention. Remember.'
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.
You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
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.
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.
Worries go down better with soup than without.
Feet, why do I need them if I have wings to fly?
I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'
Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
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.
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.
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.
I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
I had no idea how much of this was making it through the muffling bag.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
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.
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
They weren't wearing insignia.
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
There were millions of ways that the world could kill me.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
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 boasts of his ancestry is praising the deeds of another.
My friends are my estate.
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.
Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field - and keep on doing it.
You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
I shouted, and earned a hard thump on my head for my trouble.
History is more or less bunk.
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
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.
Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.
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.
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.
As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things.
A moment later, I caught my breath, but I didn't say anything.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.
Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
It?s like your batteries get low, and you need to charge them on someone else?s story.
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.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
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.'
I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.
I ended up stepping on her stomach as the crowd pushed me past her, but by then I don't think she was feeling anything.
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
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 were millions of ways that the world could kill me.
To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.
I wanted to flag you down because my friend was bleeding. Someone stabbed him."
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.
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
Better by far you should forget and smile than you should remember and be sad.
Terrorists killed a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
But be, as you have been, my happiness...
Be careful that victories do not carry the seed of future defeats.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.
Is there life before death?
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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.
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law.
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.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.
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.
Hares can gambol over the body of a dead lion.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
He who boasts of his ancestry is praising the deeds of another.
Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
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.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
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?
Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.
Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
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 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!
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.
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.
Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.
Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
All the world's a cage.
Is there life before death?
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
If my mental map was right, we were heading down to Fisherman's Wharf.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
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.
Your world is made of your memories, and your memories are given to you by your world. The whispering voice of happenstance is always in our ears. 'This is the world. This is the way things are. Look. Pay attention. Remember.'
There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.
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.
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.
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.
He who boasts of his ancestry is praising the deeds of another.
I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
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.
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
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.
It's takin' whatever comes your way, the good AND the bad, that give life flavor. It's all the stuff rolled together that makes life worth livin'.
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.
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
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.
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.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
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.
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.
Time is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it's against the oppressor. You don't need anything else.
Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
Truth has beauty, power and necessity.
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
He had learned over the years that poor people did not feel so poor when allowed to give occasionally.
A joke's a very serious thing.
The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.
It's a dangerous business going out your front door.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
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.
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.
Facts are the enemy of truth.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
Anger at lies lasts forever. Anger at truth can't last.
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.
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.
A minute's success pays the failure of years.
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 evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
Each individual woman's body demands to be accepted on its own terms.
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.
Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side.
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.
Confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can have. It's much sexier than any body part.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
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.
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?
Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his.
Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.
The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without 'playing up' to anyone - even to himself.
Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?
If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play at it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
I don't own a cell phone or a pager. I just hang around everyone I know, all the time. If someone wants to get a hold of me, they just say 'Mitch,' and I say 'what?' and turn my head slightly.
I heard them shouting through the muffling canvas of the bag, and then I was being impersonally hauled to my feet by my wrists, my arms wrenched up behind my back, my shoulders screaming.
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.
I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
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.
An idea is salvation by imagination.
Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.
A moment later, I caught my breath, but I didn't say anything.
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.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
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.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
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.
There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
Walking is man's best medicine.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
It felt like they used a baton or something -- it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head before.
You create your opportunities by asking for them.
You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
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.
Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Love truth, and pardon error.
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."
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
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.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
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 happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
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.
It's not the hours you put in your work that counts, it's the work you put in the hours.
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.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
A few seconds later, I tripped over a steel staircase, bashing my shins.
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.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
In the absences of a decent time machine, fiction remains the most sturdy vehicle for visiting other eras.
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.
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.
Good taste is the enemy of comedy.
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim".
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
It is my hope that I can assist you in getting here too.
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.
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?
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.
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.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
It?s like your batteries get low, and you need to charge them on someone else?s story.
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.
Look at all the sentences which seem true and question them.
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.
More bodies were roughly shoved in beside me.
I feel like a tiny bird with a big song!
Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.
The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
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.
A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.
Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
Like anyone else, there are days I feel beautiful and days I don't, and when I don't, I do something about it.
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
Memory feeds imagination.
There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
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.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
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.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.
The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it.
Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
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.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
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.
To be willing to die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
Vigorous writing is concise.
You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.
Van was screaming something and Jolu was shouting and I looked at them for a second and that was when someone put a coarse.
A few seconds later, I tripped over a steel staircase, bashing my shins.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex--but Congress can.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
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 great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
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.
Science is nothing but developed perception, interpreted intent, common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.
Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.
Life is consciousness.
I had no idea how much of this was making it through the muffling bag.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts.
We are what we repeatedly do.
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
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.
There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.
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.
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
You freeze where you are, time stops, and your heart thunders in your ears.
If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.
If you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don't, you're simply ducking your responsibilities.
The first vehicle that screamed past -- an ambulance -- didn't even slow down.
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
Someone went upside my head again.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
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.
Each body has its art...
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.
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.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
Each body has its art...
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
Whatever you fear most has no power - it is your fear that has the power.
You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him up to a heavy load.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.
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.
There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
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.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
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?
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.
Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his.
You can only cure retail but you can prevent .
The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
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.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to.
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.
Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
You can't deny laughter. When it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.