A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
All happiness depends on courage and work. I have had many periods of wretchedness, but with energy and above all with illusions, I pulled through them all.
All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.
All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.
Although I am a pious man, I am not the less a man.
An ambassador is an honest person sent to lie abroad for their country.
And he that strives to touch the stars, Oft stumbles at a straw.
And if you're interested in the quality of education and you're paying attention to what you hear at Laclede, why don't you volunteer? Why don't you mentor a child how to read?
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities.
As Mark Twain said, "I love Wagner – if only they'd cut out all that damned singing!"
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
At the moment it's just a Notion, but with a bit of backing I think I could turn it into Concept, and then an Idea.
Attention to health is life greatest hindrance.
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
But from the good health of the mind comes that which is dear to all and the object of prayer – happiness.
But I like not these great success of yours; for I know how jealous are the gods.
But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
But the devil when he purports any evil against man, first perverts his mind.
But though Heaven made him poor, with reverence speaking, He never was a poet of God’s making; The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull, With this prophetic blessing – Be thou dull;
But whether lasting or temporary, getting worse or not, unemployment undoubtedly is and has always been a scourge. ... The real tragedy is not unemployment per se, but unemployment plus the impossibility of providing adequately for the unemployed without impairing the conditions of further economic development.
Capital punishment would be more effective as a preventive measure if it were administered prior to the crime.
Compassion is the basis of all morality.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
Cynic: n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
Don Gabriel had a good revolver and he could shoot as straight as the next man. The Indians had no revolvers and could not buy any either; they had no money and, in any case, it was strictly forbidden to sell them revolvers or rifles, apart from muzzle-loaders for game. So don Gabriel accepted the post. He would have accepted the post of watching boiling cauldrons in hell if anyone had offered it to him. He was so down on his luck that he had no choice. It was getting on to twenty years since he had sought a way out in honest work. And a job in government is far and away the best. A man has only to keep his eyes open and pounce as soon as the prey shows its nose.
Even to smile at the misfortunes of others is to do an injury.
Every accusation against a fallen man gains credence.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.
Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
Expedients are for the hour; principles for the ages.
Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.
Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.
Find the good. It's all around you. Find it, showcase it and you'll start believing in it.
Fish fuck in it.
For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.
For the future, therefore, I must call Oroonoko Caesar; since by that name only he was known in our Western World, and by that name he was received on shore at Parham-House, where he was destined a slave. But if the King himself (God bless him) had come ashore, there could not have been greater expectation by all the whole plantation, and those neighboring ones, than was on ours at that time; and he was received more like a governor than a slave: notwithstanding, as the custom was, they assigned him his portion of land, his house, and his business up in the plantation. But as it was more for form than any design to put him to his task, he endured no more of the slave but the name, and remained some days in the house, receiving all visits that were made him, without stirring towards that part of the plantation where the negroes were.
Have the courage to do something which deserves transportation if you want to be somebody.
He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.
He who exercises wisdom exercises the knowledge which is about the gods.
He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
He who overlooks a fault, invites the commission of another.
His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though not to soar.
Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent.
How inexpressible is the meanness of being a hypocrite! how horrible is it to be a mischievous and malignant hypocrite.
How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. ... If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young, and the picture that were to grow old! For this – for this – I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give!"
Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as "right" in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as "brute force."
I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits.
I cannot live without books.
I do not play cricket because it requires me to assume such indecent postures
I feel an earnest and humble desire, and shall till I die, to increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.
I know of no better life purpose than to perish in attempting the great and the impossible.
I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take power from them, but to inform them by education.
I love scandals about other people, but scandals about myself don’t interest me. They have not got the charm of novelty.
I tell Thee that man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.
If I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.
If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.
In a higher phase of communist society ... only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be fully left behind and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
In concert with their fellow workers, black people can take decisive control of their own destinies; with a union, they can approach their employers as proud and upright equals, not as trembling and bowing slaves. Indeed, a solid union contract is, in a very real sense, another Emancipation Proclamation.
In historical events great men – so-called – are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.
In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has been the Christian churches.
In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.
In my judgment, when the United States says there will be serious consequences, and if there isn't serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences.
In the end, for all our differences and conflicts, most women and men share the same food, work, shelter, bed, life, joy, anguish, and fate. We need each other.
Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee. Your husband will say, ", Sally, I used to think your coffee was only so-so. But now, wow!" Safe when taken as directed.
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.
It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.
It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph – only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones.
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
It is vain to look for a defence against lightning.
Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.
Jupiter, not wanting man's life to be wholly gloomy and grim, has bestowed far more passion than reason – you could reckon the ration as twenty-four to one. Moreover, he confined reason to a cramped corner of the head and left all the rest of the body to the passions.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present.
Make it a point to 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.
Man does not speak because he thinks; he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this – no dog exchanges bones with another.
Man is on earth as in an egg.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
More belongs to marriage than four legs in a bed.
More is thy due than more than all can pay.
My friends don't want me to mention Kurt's name, because of all the recent Nazi stuff and the U.N. controversy, but I love him and Maria does too, and so thank you, Kurt.
My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.
My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Not every difficult and dangerous thing is suitable for training, but only that which is conducive to success in achieving the object of our effort.
Not only do ... rulers keep many millions of men whose only trade is war, but these must be supported in worse than useless idleness by the labor of the poor. Still other millions are trained to war and are ever ready to answer to their master's call, to desert their homes and trades and offer up their lives to satisfy the vain ambitions of the ruler of the state. Millions more must give their strength and lives to build forts and ships, make guns and cannon and all the modern implements of war. Apart from any moral question of the right of man to slay his fellow man, all this great burden rests upon the poor. The vast expense of war comes from the production of the land and must serve to weaken and impair its industrial strength.
Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.
Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.
Oh, please don't kill me.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
Once we begin to want, we fall under the jurisdiction of the Devil. It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition.
One must be reasonable in one's demands on life. For myself, all that I ask is: (1) accurate information; (2) coherent knowledge; (3) deep understanding; (4) infinite loving wisdom; (5) no more kidney stones, please.
One must not cheat anybody, not even the world of one's triumph.
One of rarest things that a man ever does is to do the best he can.
One regrets the loss of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.
One should always be a little improbable.
One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
One should never take sides in anything, Mr. Kelvil. Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.
One word is worth a thousand pictures. If it's the right word.
Only the educated are free.
Only trust thyself, and another shall not betray thee.
Out of the jaws of death.
People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.
Perhaps the day may come when we shall remember these sufferings with joy.
Please get me the names of the Jews. You know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats? Could we please investigate some of those cocksuckers?
Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.
Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
Stands not within the prospect of belief.
Such men as fortune raises from a mean estate to the highest elevation by way of a joke.
Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.
Taste has no system and no proofs.
Thanks be to God. Since my leaving the drinking of wine, I do find myself much better, and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.
The aesthete aims at harmony rather than beauty. If his hair does not match the mauve sunset against which he is standing, he hurriedly dyes his hair another shade of mauve. If his wife does not go with the wall-paper, he gets a divorce.
The blues is an art of ambiguity, an assertion of the irrepressibly human over all circumstances, whether created by others or by one's own human failing.
The circumstances of others seem good to us, while ours seem good to others.
The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening.
The days of peace and slumberous calm are fled.
The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity there is no excess, neither can angel or man come in danger by it.
The destiny of man is in his own soul.
The dowry, not the wife, is the object of attraction.
The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one's designs to one's means.
The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. Take the rope apart, separate it into the small threads that compose it, and you can break them one by one. You think, "That is all there was!" But twist them all together and you have something tremendous.
The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.
The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens.
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
The man who does not think it was America’s duty to fight for her own sake in view of the infamous conduct of Germany toward us stands on a level with a man who wouldn’t think it necessary to fight in a private quarrel because his wife’s face was slapped.
The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power... Power is not a means; it is an end ... not power over things, but over men ... In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement ... There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother... Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.
The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served by others as little as possible, and to serve others as much as possible.
The strongest poison ever known came from Caesar's laurel crown.
The sweeter sound of woman's praise.
The voice of the special rebels and prophets, recommending discontent, should, as I have said, sound now and then suddenly, like a trumpet. But the voices of the saints and sages, recommending contentment, should sound unceasingly, like the sea.
The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.
The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.
The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.
There are no good girls gone wrong, just bad girls found out.
There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify – so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.
There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.
These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.
These things are not for the best, nor as I think they ought to be; but still they are better than that which is downright bad.
They like to crucify those who invent their own virtue for themselves – they hate the lonely one.
They misunderestimated me.
This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isnt created to take you to heaven.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house unless they have a well-stocked bar.
Three words remain that can yet stir the blood of man: the word "rebellion"; the word "revolt"; the word "revolution".
Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.
To gain a livelihood at the expense of all that makes life worth the having.
To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.
Truly, to tell lies is not honorable; but when the truth entails tremendous ruin, To speak dishonorably is pardonable.
Unexpected money is a delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more.
Very often, say what you will, a knave is only a fool.
Was it by reason that I attained the knowledge that I must love my neighbour and not throttle him? They told me so when I was a child, and I gladly believed it, because they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason! Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.
Water rusts pipes.
We have enough votes to run the country. And when the people say, "We've had enough," we are going to take over.
We ought to see far enough into a hypocrite to see even his sincerity.
What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism.
What is got over the devil's back is spent under his belly.
What the proletariat needs is a bath of blood.
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
While I take inspiration from the past, like most Americans, I live for the future.
Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.
Wise men argue cases, fools decide them.
Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.
Woman's influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
You had not yet sought yourselves: and you found me. Thus do all believers; therefore all faith amounts to so little.
You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.
You have no more right to consume happiness without producing it, than to consume wealth without producing it.
You know he's [Bush] there illegally. You know he was not elected either by the popular vote or by the vote in Florida.
You should go to a pear tree for pears, not to an elm.
Your friendship is dearer to me than any fame or reputation.
