Civilization is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.
Clairvoyant: n. A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron – namely, that he is a blockhead.
Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.
Development ... is then defined by the carrying out of new combinations. ... New combinations are, as a rule, embodied ... in firms which generally do not arise out of the old ones but start producing beside them. ... It is not the owner of a stage coach who builds railways.
During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.
Education is an admirable thing, but it well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Education: n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.
Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err.
If men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail.
In New York – whose subway trains in particular have been "tattooed" with an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame – not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements.
Inspiration in matters of taste will not come twice.
It must be done like lightning.
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.
Moral principle is a looser bond than pecuniary interest.
Nature herself was proud of his designs, And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines! Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, As since, she will vouchsafe no other wit.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.
Peace: n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
The end always passes judgement on what has gone before.
The fantastic advances in the field of electronic communication constitute a greater danger to the privacy of the individual.
The lucky person passes for a genius
The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
The politician is trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wound him.
The trouble with the French is, they have no word for entrepreneur.
There is nothing like a dream to create the future.
To a father waxing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter.
To say that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no God at all. What alleges he against it, but the School-divinity which I have already answered? Scripture he can bring none, because the word incorporeal is not found in Scripture.
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.
When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.
Woman has this in common with angels, that suffering beings belong especially to her.
