Sometimes love will pick you up by the short hairs...and jerk the heck out of you.
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.
We inhereit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted... Each of us contains within... this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise.
To try to be better is to be better.
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
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.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.
Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
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.
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.
Who were these clowns?
They can conquer who believe they can.
Let me tell you, quite frankly, it took a while and a lot of therapy to get here.
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.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
I don't like composers who think. It gets in the way of their plagiarism.
Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his.
Intimacy is what makes a marriage, not a ceremony, not a piece of paper from the state.
In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
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.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
By learning to discover and value our ordinariness, we nurture a friendliness toward ourselves and the world that is the essence of a healthy soul.
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
So little time and so little to do.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.
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.'
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality... the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
A man can do all things if he but wills them.
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
Intimacy is what makes a marriage, not a ceremony, not a piece of paper from the state.
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
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.
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.
Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.
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.
He who boasts of his ancestry is praising the deeds of another.
A minute's success pays the failure of years.
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
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.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Be careful that victories do not carry the seed of future defeats.
The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
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.
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
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.
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
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!
My home is not a place, it is people.
There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
I stand in awe of my body.
People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.
Maybe the most any of us can expect of ourselves isn't perfection but progress.
I never know how much of what I say is true.
If you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don't, you're simply ducking your responsibilities.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
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!
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
Never rely on the glory of the morning nor the smiles of your mother-in-law.
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.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
Nothing is said that has not been said before.
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?
As I neared her, I bent to help her up, and was nearly knocked over her.
The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him up to a heavy load.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
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?
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... But I am too busy thinking about myself.
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
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.
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
I stand in awe of my body.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
Worries go down better with soup than without.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
It felt like they used a baton or something -- it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head before.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.
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.
We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
Humor is also a way of saying something serious.
A man can do all things if he but wills them.
The trick is to make sure you don't die waiting for prosperity to come.
I was pushed roughly but dispassionately onto my stomach and something went twice around my wrists and then tightened up as well, feeling like baling wire and biting cruelly.
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.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
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.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
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.
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.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
I say luck is when an opportunity comes along, and you're prepared for it.
They weren't wearing insignia.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
It's a dangerous business going out your front door.
By learning to discover and value our ordinariness, we nurture a friendliness toward ourselves and the world that is the essence of a healthy soul.
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
Someone's boring me. I think it's me.
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
I went up the stairs cautiously, not able to use my hands.
More bodies were roughly shoved in beside me.
I cried out and my own voice was muffled by the hood.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
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.
Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
The average person thinks he isn't.
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
Love truth, and pardon error.
My wish is to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I will not resign myself...
Someone went upside my head again.
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.
Having a holiday weekend without a family member felt like putting on a sweater that had an extra arm.
Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.
Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.
Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
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.
I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
So quick and so fiercely I barely had time to gasp before it was locked on me.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Depend not on fortune, but on conduct.
Someone's boring me. I think it's me.
I wanted to flag you down because my friend was bleeding. Someone stabbed him."
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.
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.
The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.
Sack over my head and cinched it tight around my windpipe.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
You create your opportunities by asking for them.
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
I'm struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity. The transfer is not paying off. Sure, muscles are unreliable, but they represent several million years of accumulated finesse.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
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.
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.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.
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.
Is there life before death?
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
For visions come not to polluted eyes.
No one goes there nowadays, it's too crowded.
Do it now. It is not safe to leave a generous feeling to the cooling influences of the world.
Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
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.
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
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.
So little time and so little to do.
The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
Never eat more than you can lift.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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.
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.
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
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.
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
Nothing is so good for an ignorant man as silence; and if he was sensible of this he would not be ignorant.
People fail forward to success.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
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.
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.
Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
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.
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Facts are the enemy of truth.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do.
She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim".
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
What's the earth With all its art, verse, music, worth - Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
Walking is man's best medicine.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'
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.
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.
Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
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.
To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains.
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
What children take from us, they give?We become people who feel more deeply, question more deeply, hurt more deeply, and love more deeply.
It's important to begin a search on a full stomach.
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.
Anger is never without Reason, but seldom with a good One.
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
He was one of those men who think that the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.
Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
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.
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
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.
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.
You always pass failure on the way to success.
I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.
No.
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.
It is not much for its beauty that makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.
You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.
Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
Confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can have. It's much sexier than any body part.
Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.
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.
Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
It was a military-looking Jeep, like an armored Hummer, only it didn't have any military insignia on it.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
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.
You could get on a boat there, get away. That fit with the terrorism hypothesis.
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
I wrote myself a check for ten million dollars for acting services rendered and dated it Thanksgiving 1995. I put it in my wallet and it deteriorated. And then, just before Thanksgiving 1995, I found out I was going to make ten million dollars for Dumb & Dumber. I put that check in the casket with my father because it was our dream together.
I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get.
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
Now we were descending just as steeply.
Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen.
There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.
The first vehicle that screamed past -- an ambulance -- didn't even slow down.
A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.
Let me tell you, quite frankly, it took a while and a lot of therapy to get here.
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.
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.
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
Be more prompt to go to a friend in adversity than in prosperity.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
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?
You can have it all. You just can't have it all at once.
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
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.
Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.
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.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
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.
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love, though I'd stepped in it a few times.
Who were these clowns?
Darryl wasn't in good shape -- he was white-faced and panting.
You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.
So little time and so little to do.
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.
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.
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?
Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.
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 undertaking of a new action brings new strength.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
Beware the pull on your heartstrings -- it's often the pursestrings that are actually being reached for.
Vigorous writing is concise.
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.
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.
Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
We inhereit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted... Each of us contains within... this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise.
No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.
A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
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.
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.
Having a holiday weekend without a family member felt like putting on a sweater that had an extra arm.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
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.
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
I have very strong feelings about how you lead your life. You always look ahead, you never look back.
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.
Even the best of friends need time apart.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
It's not the hours you put in your work that counts, it's the work you put in the hours.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is all that is left him.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
Someone's boring me. I think it's me.
You should not live one way in private, another in public.
Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
A hobby a day keeps the doldrums away.
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.
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.
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.
By learning to discover and value our ordinariness, we nurture a friendliness toward ourselves and the world that is the essence of a healthy soul.
I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the last one left.
You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
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?
Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Worries go down better with soup than without.
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
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.
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 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.
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
I was sick of cars driving right past me.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
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.
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
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.
Winning is important to me, but what brings me real joy is the experience of being fully engaged in whatever I'm doing.
She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.
He had learned over the years that poor people did not feel so poor when allowed to give occasionally.
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
I was as scared as I'd ever been. There was screaming everywhere now, and more bodies on the floor, and the press from behind was as relentless as a bulldozer. It was all I could do to keep on my feet.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.
I was as scared as I'd ever been. There was screaming everywhere now, and more bodies on the floor, and the press from behind was as relentless as a bulldozer. It was all I could do to keep on my feet.
He who laughs, lasts!
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
Up ahead, I saw someone, a middle-aged lady in a hippie dress, falter and fall.
Worrying about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.
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.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
No one goes there nowadays, it's too crowded.
Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.
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.
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.
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.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
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.
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
Someone dragged me by my arms out onto the road, then shoved me, stumbling, down a paved road.
I was pushed roughly but dispassionately onto my stomach and something went twice around my wrists and then tightened up as well, feeling like baling wire and biting cruelly.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
I guess we'd be living in a boring, perfect world if everybody wished everybody else well.
You cannot be mad at somebody who makes you laugh - it's as simple as that.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
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.
We do not believe if we do not live and work according to our belief.
Be more prompt to go to a friend in adversity than in prosperity.
The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
Starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia -- that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists.
I didn't even breathe.
We play the hands of cards life gives us. And the worst hands can make us the best players.
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money.
I'd never looked down the barrel of a gun before, but everything you've heard about the experience is true.
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.
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'd learned my lesson.
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
An idea is salvation by imagination.
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.
Nothing is said that has not been said before.
Better by far you should forget and smile than you should remember and be sad.
The best way out is always through.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
A smiling face is half the meal.
It's all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation.
There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
History is more or less bunk.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
Now we were descending just as steeply.
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
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.
Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.
Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
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.
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.
An idea is salvation by imagination.
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.
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
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.
Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
Do it now. It is not safe to leave a generous feeling to the cooling influences of the world.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.
Be careful that victories do not carry the seed of future defeats.
I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get.
Take a two-mile walk every morning before breakfast.
There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
For visions come not to polluted eyes.
Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
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!
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself...True happiness is born of self-reliance.
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
Love truth, and pardon error.
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.
I had no idea how much of this was making it through the muffling bag.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we're more likely to be changed by it.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
My head rang like a gong.
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
My head rang like a gong.
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.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.
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.
Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter how many other careers we've had or wanted.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.
What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
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.
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.'
We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.
A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?
If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
If my mental map was right, we were heading down to Fisherman's Wharf.
Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
My head rang like a gong.
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.
Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
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.
Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
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.
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.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
Anger is never without Reason, but seldom with a good One.
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.
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.
All things are difficult before they are easy.
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
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.
What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty.
Without the capacity to provide its own information, the mind drifts into randomness.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
No one goes there nowadays, it's too crowded.
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.
History is more or less bunk.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there.
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
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.
After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
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.
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.
True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.
It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Feet, why do I need them if I have wings to fly?
It felt like they used a baton or something -- it was harder than anyone had ever hit me in the head before.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
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.
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
I felt the doors open near me, and then saw a confusion of booted feet moving close by.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him up to a heavy load.
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.
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.
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.
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.
When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
Maybe they were terrorists!
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.
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do.
When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
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.
Even the best of friends need time apart.
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
The average person thinks he isn't.
If you aren't fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.
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 they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
Someone went upside my head again.
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
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.
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it.
The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field - and keep on doing it.
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
I opened my mouth, then shut it, then, very slowly, I held my hands up in front of me.
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.
The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
It's not the hours you put in your work that counts, it's the work you put in the hours.
We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
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.
Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
Learning to live in the present moment is part of the path of joy.
'Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.' Under the influence of this pestilent morality, I am forever letting tomorrow's work slop backwards into today's, and doing painfully and nervously today what I could do quickly and easily tomorrow.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
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 average person thinks he isn't.
A man can do all things if he but wills them.
I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches per sec.
Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts.
Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.
Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.
Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling.
Bacchus hath drowned more men than Neptune.
The crowd gives the leader new strength.
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
I don't generally feel anything until noon; then it's time for my nap.
The hands behind me gave me another shove.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
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.
Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.
Now we were descending just as steeply.
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?
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.
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.
Some people make headlines while others make history.
I stumbled some, then a hand pushed my head down and I was inside the Hummer.
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.
When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, 'It all depends on me.'
Our lives teach us who we are.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
The faceless, eyeless armed man above me kept his gun very level.
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's.
Vigorous writing is concise.
History is more or less bunk.
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.
From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading 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.
Talking with you is sort of the conversational equivalent of an out of body experience.
All love that has not friendship for its base, is like a mansion built upon sand.
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.
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
It's important to begin a search on a full stomach.
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.
It's all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation.
Having a holiday weekend without a family member felt like putting on a sweater that had an extra arm.
You never find yourself until you face the truth.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all of your time.
A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
Each body has its art...
A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is all that is left him.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
Fig Newton: The force required to accelerate a fig 39.37 inches per sec.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
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.
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.
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.
Someone dragged me by my arms out onto the road, then shoved me, stumbling, down a paved road.
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.
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.
Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
It was enough to make a body ashamed of the human race.
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
The car slewed to a stop and only then did I notice that it wasn't a cop car, ambulance or fire-engine.
When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
If it weren't for baseball, many kids wouldn't know what a millionaire looked like.
I have the worst memory ever so no matter who comes up to me - they're just, like, 'I can't believe you don't remember me!" I'm like, 'Oh Dad I'm sorry!'
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
It is impossible to walk rapidly and be unhappy.
What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
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.
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.
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
People fail forward to success.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.
Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
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.
If you want to be respected, you must respect yourself.
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.
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.
The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
All the world's a cage.
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.
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.
Laughter is supposed to be the best medicine, however, it should never be at the expense of someone?s feelings or ignoring truth.
I barely had time to register them before those rifles were pointed at me.
Your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.
Don't mace him!" I shouted over the din. "You'll get us all too.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
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.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
It's innocence when it charms us, ignorance when it doesn't.
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.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
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.'
Truth has beauty, power and necessity.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Never eat more than you can lift.
You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.
I was in total darkness now and I strained my ears to hear what was going on with my friends.
There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.