People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
Van's sweater was soaked in blood.
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.
Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.
A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is all that is left him.
Make a decision, even if it's wrong.
Do not envy a sinner; you don't know what disaster awaits him.
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the 'ah-ha'.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
The crux... is that the vast majority of the mass of the universe seems to be missing.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.
The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from anybody else.
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
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.
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.
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 trick is to make sure you don't die waiting for prosperity to come.
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
A minute's success pays the failure of years.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
Who were these clowns?
I stumbled some, then a hand pushed my head down and I was inside the Hummer.
Most of the basic truths of life sound absurd at first hearing.
Funny business, a woman's career: the things you drop on the way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. It's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: being a woman.
The two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a big fat white guy who is threatened by change.
I hope that when I die, people say about me, 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money.'
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
How we treasure (and admire) the people who acknowledge us!
Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn?t hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor.
I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
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.
In the absences of a decent time machine, fiction remains the most sturdy vehicle for visiting other eras.
I didn't even breathe.
It's never just a game when you're winning.
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.
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extrordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.
Sack over my head and cinched it tight around my windpipe.
The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
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.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
The hands behind me gave me another shove.
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living.
Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
Noble life demands a noble architecture for noble uses of noble men. Lack of culture means what it has always meant: ignoble civilization and therefore imminent downfall.
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
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.
Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
The best way out is always through.
Go often to the house of thy friend; for weeds soon choke up the unused path.
It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right.
Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.
Art is science made clear.
The average person thinks he isn't.
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.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.
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.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most astonishing.
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
None are so busy as the fool and knave.
College isn't the place to go for ideas.
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
All things are difficult before they are easy.
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 radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
The freedom of all is essential to my freedom.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
I define comfort as self-acceptance. When we finally learn that self-care begins and ends with ourselves, we no longer demand sustenance and happiness from others.
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
There is an applause superior to that of the multitudes: one's own.
We've got to get my friend to a hospital --"
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
I'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.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.
...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.
Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
For the most part, fear is nothing but an illusion. When you share it with someone else, it tends to disappear.
By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
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.
As I get older, I've learned to listen to people rather than accuse them of things.
I stand in awe of my body.
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content
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.
You can only cure retail but you can prevent .
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
We've got to get my friend to a hospital --"
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
Liberals are very broadminded: they are always willing to give careful consideration to both sides of the same side.
We cannot destroy kindred: Our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break.
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
The faceless, eyeless armed man above me kept his gun very level.
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
I 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.
Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
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.
Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
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.
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
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.
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
I use an optimistic, positive approach to deal with my symptoms and it came the hard way, before I learned to laugh with myself a little.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
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.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
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.
If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happier we would all be.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.
I feel very strongly that change is good because it stirs up the system.
By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
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.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
He was one of those men who think that the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
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.
When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty... But I am too busy thinking about myself.
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Where facts are few, experts are many.
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.
I was the kid next door's imaginary friend.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
Van's sweater was soaked in blood.
Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too.
There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
We rocked to a stop still on a downslope.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves.
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.
Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves.
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim".
We need anything politically important rationed out like Pez: small, sweet, and coming out of a funny, plastic head.
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.
Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn't block traffic.
I cried out and my own voice was muffled by the hood.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Worries go down better with soup than without.
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
Now we were descending just as steeply.
Walking is man's best medicine.
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
An idea is salvation by imagination.
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn whatever state I am in, therin to be content
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
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.
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
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.
We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
The happiest is the person who suffers the least pain; the most miserable who enjoys the least pleasure.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
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.
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
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.
The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn't get bigger or heavier.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
Maybe they were terrorists!
We rocked to a stop still on a downslope.
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.
I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
I don't think about risks much. I just do what I want to do. If you gotta go, you gotta go.
There?s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
If there is one thing worse than being an ugly duckling in a house of swans, it's having the swans pretend there's no difference.
A few seconds later, I tripped over a steel staircase, bashing my shins.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
My eyes swam and watered and I literally couldn't breathe through the pain.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.
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.
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.'
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the 'ah-ha'.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.
I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.
Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness.
None are so busy as the fool and knave.
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.
Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
I never know how much of what I say is true.
Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?
I nearly fell again, but new hands grabbed me from in front and dragged me down a steel floor and then forced me to my knees and locked my hands to something behind me.
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.
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.
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
We inhereit from our ancestors gifts so often taken for granted... Each of us contains within... this inheritance of soul. We are links between the ages, containing past and present expectations, sacred memories and future promise.
The car slewed to a stop and only then did I notice that it wasn't a cop car, ambulance or fire-engine.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
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.
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
You freeze where you are, time stops, and your heart thunders in your ears.
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.
Terrorists killed a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions.
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun.
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
History is more or less bunk.
At the mention of the word mace, the guy looked scared and kind of melted back, though the crowd kept him moving forward.
Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.
History is more or less bunk.
Anger at lies lasts forever. Anger at truth can't last.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
I have the worst memory ever so no matter who comes up to me - they're just, like, 'I can't believe you don't remember me!" I'm like, 'Oh Dad I'm sorry!'
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
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.
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
Sometimes you can't see yourself clearly until you see yourself through the eyes of others.
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
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.
To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young.
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
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.
Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
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 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.
Whatever you fear most has no power - it is your fear that has the power.
There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
Someone went upside my head again.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
She screamed as she went down, and I saw her thrashing to get up, but she couldn't, the crowd's pressure was too strong.
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
A joke's a very serious thing.
A poem is no place for an idea.
I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
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.
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.
What children take from us, they give?We become people who feel more deeply, question more deeply, hurt more deeply, and love more deeply.
What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.
Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
If the only prayer you ever say in your whole life is "thank you," that would suffice.
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.
Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty... Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
The hands behind me gave me another shove.
A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A choice is all that is left him.
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
Laughter is supposed to be the best medicine, however, it should never be at the expense of someone?s feelings or ignoring truth.
The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
No.
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?
We cannot deny the facts of nature, but we should certainly try to improve on them.
I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.
A few seconds later, I tripped over a steel staircase, bashing my shins.
My wish is to ride the tempest, tame the waves, kill the sharks. I will not resign myself...
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.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
Even the best of friends need time apart.
I cried out and my own voice was muffled by the hood.
There is no stigma attached to recognizing a bad decision in time to install a better one.
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.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
What can you say about a society that says that God is dead and Elvis is alive?
There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
If you think taking care of yourself is selfish, change your mind. If you don't, you're simply ducking your responsibilities.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
My friends are my estate.
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?
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
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.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
I guess we'd be living in a boring, perfect world if everybody wished everybody else well.
Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
Van's sweater was soaked in blood.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
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.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
Nothing is impossible. Some things are just less likely than others.
How we treasure (and admire) the people who acknowledge us!
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
Let me tell you, quite frankly, it took a while and a lot of therapy to get here.
Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.
Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
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.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
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 never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?
There's always one who loves and one who lets himself be loved.
It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.
Keep cool and you command everybody.
You freeze where you are, time stops, and your heart thunders in your ears.
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
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.
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.
If my mental map was right, we were heading down to Fisherman's Wharf.
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.
What children take from us, they give?We become people who feel more deeply, question more deeply, hurt more deeply, and love more deeply.
A poem is no place for an idea.
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.
Darryl wasn't in good shape -- he was white-faced and panting.
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
Order is not pressure which is imposed on society from without, but an equilibrium which is set up from within.
If it weren't for baseball, many kids wouldn't know what a millionaire looked like.
Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?
Laughing is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one spot.
Up ahead, I saw someone, a middle-aged lady in a hippie dress, falter and fall.
Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living.
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.
I kept talking. "Listen -- this is some kind of misunderstanding.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
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.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
I take it that what all men are really after is some form or perhaps only some formula of peace.
Feet, why do I need them if I have wings to fly?
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
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.
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.
Someone went upside my head again.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
The world tolerates conceit from those who are successful, but not from anybody else.
You can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
Rest is the sweet sauce of labor.
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
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.'
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.
Make hunger thy sauce, as a medicine for health.
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.
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.
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."
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
I heard Jolu respond, then felt the thump he was dealt, too.
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
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.
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
He had learned over the years that poor people did not feel so poor when allowed to give occasionally.
So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.
The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.
Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.
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?
You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him up to a heavy load.
Truth has beauty, power and necessity.
He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.
So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.
I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy.
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
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.
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.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
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.
It's important to begin a search on a full stomach.
The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.
Darryl wasn't in good shape -- he was white-faced and panting.
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.
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
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.
Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.
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.
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
Let me tell you, quite frankly, it took a while and a lot of therapy to get here.
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.
To try to be better is to be better.
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.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
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.
I cried out and my own voice was muffled by the hood.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
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 require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
Any transition serious enough to alter your definition of self will require not just small adjustments in your way of living and thinking but a full-on metamorphosis.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
He was one of those men who think that the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet.
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.
True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.
There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.
To try to be better is to be better.
We play the hands of cards life gives us. And the worst hands can make us the best players.
My head rang like a gong.
When we got into office, the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were.
The more freedom we enjoy, the greater the responsibility we bear, toward others as well as ourselves.
I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Even the best of friends need time apart.
They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.
Confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can have. It's much sexier than any body part.
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better.
Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
Van was screaming something and Jolu was shouting and I looked at them for a second and that was when someone put a coarse.
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
Time is that quality of nature which keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
I heard Jolu respond, then felt the thump he was dealt, too.
No one goes there nowadays, it's too crowded.
The mellow sweetness of pumpkin pie off a prison spoon is something you will never forget.
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.
All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
We require from buildings two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical duty well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it.
Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
The great art of giving consists in this: the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated.
We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.
Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
The only time to buy these is on a day with no 'y' in it.
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.
It is my hope that I can assist you in getting here too.
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.
Fresh clean sheets are one of life's small joys.
By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we're more likely to be changed by it.
If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play at it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf.
Someone dragged me by my arms out onto the road, then shoved me, stumbling, down a paved road.
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
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.
Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.
Late to bed and late to wake will keep you long on money and short on mistakes.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.
Nothing is as certain as that the vices of leisure are gotten rid of by being busy.
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality... the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.
Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.
As I neared her, I bent to help her up, and was nearly knocked over her.
Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his.
Only some people get what they want. Those are the people who show up to get it.
Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.
Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.
Is there life before death?
Obscurity is a good thing. You can fail in obscurity. It removes the fear of failure.
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Humor is always based on a modicum of truth. Have you ever heard a joke about a father-in-law?
All movements go too far.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.
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.
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
Sack over my head and cinched it tight around my windpipe.
The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.
Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.
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.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
Is there life before death?
Nothing is so awesomely unfamiliar as the familiar that discloses itself at the end of a journey.
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.
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.
You could get on a boat there, get away. That fit with the terrorism hypothesis.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
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.
...happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
We've got to get my friend to a hospital --"
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.
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.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare.
Seize opportunity by the beard, for it is bald behind.
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.
Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.
To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.
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.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
My home is not a place, it is people.
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.
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
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.
I kept talking. "Listen -- this is some kind of misunderstanding.
A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.
The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field - and keep on doing it.
Dance is the hidden language of the soul.
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.
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?
If you think you can win, you can win. Faith is necessary to victory.
There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
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.
Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It's just not done.
We cannot destroy kindred: Our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break.
How we remember, what we remember and why we remember form the most personal map of our individuality.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.
Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less.
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.
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.
Is there life before death?
The man who has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato - the best part under ground.
Maybe they were terrorists!
I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the last one left.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
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.
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.
My friend is one... who take me for what I am.
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
I'm moving, but don't worry! Someone once told me we're all on the same planet, so I'll be okay!
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
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 feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
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.
Truth has beauty, power and necessity.
The better part of valor is discretion, in the which better part I have saved my life.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
I was in total darkness now and I strained my ears to hear what was going on with my friends.
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.
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.
Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
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.
When you encounter difficulties and contradictions, do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.
Summer afternoon - Summer afternoon... the two most beautiful words in the English language.
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.
Neither did the cop car that went past, nor the firetruck, nor the next three cop-cars.
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.
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Before you do anything, think. If you do something to try and impress someone, to be loved, accepted or even to get someone's attention, stop and think. So many people are busy trying to create an image, they die in the process.
The 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.
Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.
The strongest possible piece of advice I would give any young woman is: Don't screw around, and don't smoke.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
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.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
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.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
I barely had time to register them before those rifles were pointed at me.
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
Arguments are to be avoided; they are always vulgar and often convincing.
Starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia -- that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists.
He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
Work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
Money doesn't always bring happiness. People with ten million dollars are no happier than people with nine million dollars.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
People fail forward to success.
I got up the third step and reached for the fourth, but it wasn't there.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
I define comfort as self-acceptance. When we finally learn that self-care begins and ends with ourselves, we no longer demand sustenance and happiness from others.
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 can go a long way with bad legs and a good head.
I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.
Deeds, not words shall speak me.
Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.
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.
Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Go to the bottom of things. Any thing half done, or half known, is in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay, worse, for it often misleads.
The 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.
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that you live, if you do.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
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.
Art is science made clear.
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.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
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.
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.
You need only claim the event of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.
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.
We rocked to a stop still on a downslope.
No man remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
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.
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.
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.
Memory feeds imagination.
It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis.
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!
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.
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
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.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
For visions come not to polluted eyes.
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.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.
We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.
You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in.
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.
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.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming... suddenly you find - at the age of 50, say - that a whole new life has opened before you.
It 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.
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
By the time I'd grown up, I naturally supposed that I'd be grown up.
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 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.
You never know how a horse will pull until you hook him up to a heavy load.
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
I went up the stairs cautiously, not able to use my hands.
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.
I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
It was a military-looking Jeep, like an armored Hummer, only it didn't have any military insignia on it.
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.
Know, first, who you are; and then adorn yourself accordingly.
As I neared her, I bent to help her up, and was nearly knocked over her.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.
O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.
Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable.
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.
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.
Having a holiday weekend without a family member felt like putting on a sweater that had an extra arm.
Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.
Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
It's important to begin a search on a full stomach.
The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.
I believe that every now and then it is important to laugh at ourselves and take a lighter approach to our life conditions.
If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry.
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
I had no idea how much of this was making it through the muffling bag.
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth.
If you want to be respected, you must respect yourself.
I don't like composers who think. It gets in the way of their plagiarism.
Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
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.
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.
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
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.
I'd never really believed in terrorists before.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
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.
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.'
Level with your child by being honest. Nobody spots a phony quicker than a child.
Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.
What children take from us, they give?We become people who feel more deeply, question more deeply, hurt more deeply, and love more deeply.
If you scatter thorns, don't go barefoot.
When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.
We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.
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.
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
I am not young enough to know everything.
To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.
You freeze where you are, time stops, and your heart thunders in your ears.
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.
What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
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.
As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.
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.
Use what you have to run toward your best - that's how I now live my life.
Love is, above all else, the gift of oneself.
It is not enough to aim; you must hit.
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.
He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
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.
When we got into office, the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were.
The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds, ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation.
For visions come not to polluted eyes.
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.
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinions at all.
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
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.
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
Never let the demands of tomorrow interfere with the pleasures and excitement of today.
The scornful nostril and the high head gather not the odors that lie on the track of truth.
What if this weren't a hypothetical question?
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!
To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
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.
A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?
Art is science made clear.
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.
Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.
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.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
Things are only impossible until they're not.
Challenge is a dragon with a gift in its mouth?Tame the dragon and the gift is yours.
While we have the gift of life, it seems to me that only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.
I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the last one left.
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.
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.
Truth has beauty, power and necessity.
Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest.
Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
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.
Why the hell would terrorists kidnap a bunch of high school students?
I was sick of cars driving right past me.
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.
Everybody likes to go their own way--to choose their own time and manner of devotion.
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.
Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing.
The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.
I got up the third step and reached for the fourth, but it wasn't there.
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.
The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.
When you want to believe in something, you also have to believe in everything that's necessary for believing in it.
When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
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.
Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.
What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question.
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.
Reveal not every secret you have to a friend, for how can you tell but that friend may hereafter become an enemy. And bring not all mischief you are able to upon an enemy, for he may one day become your friend.
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.