Martyrdom is the only way a man can
become famous without ability.
If you value a man's regard, strive
with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper -- and despise it.
Life would be tolerable but for its
amusements.
Great art is never produced for its
own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.
Beauty is all very well at first
sight; but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
How can you dare teach a man to
read until you've taught him everything else first?
Find enough clever things to say,
and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.
I enjoy convalescence. It is the
part that makes the illness worth while.
I never thought much of the courage
of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
I believe in Michelangelo,
Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the
redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has
made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.
In this world there is always
danger for those who are afraid of it.
The government who robs Peter to
pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
As long as I have a want, I have a
reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
Between persons of equal income
there is no social distinction except the distinction of merit. Money is
nothing: character, conduct, and capacity are everything. There would be great
people and ordinary people and little people, but the great would always be
those who had done great things, and never the idiots whose mothers had spoiled
them and whose fathers had left them a hundred thousand a year; and the little
would be persons of small minds and mean characters, and not poor persons who
had never had a chance. That is why idiots are always in favor of inequality of
income (their only chance of eminence), and the really great in favor of
equality.
If history repeats itself, and the
unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from
experience!
We have not lost faith, but we have
transferred it from God to the medical profession.
But a lifetime of happiness! No man
alive could bear it: it would be hell on earth.
back to top
The things most people want to know
about are usually none of their business.
Life at its noblest leaves mere
happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object
of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the
readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.
Hatred is the coward's revenge for
being intimidated
Here there is no hope, and
consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained by praying, nothing to be
lost by doing what you like. Hell, in short, is a place where you have nothing
to do but amuse yourself.
He who has never hoped can never
despair.
Human beings are the only animals
of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid
Imagination is the beginning of
creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last
you create what you will.
Hell is paved with good intentions,
not with bad ones. All men mean well.
The English have no respect for
their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
back to top
Liberty means responsibility. That
is why most men dread it.
Life is a disease; and the only
difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he
lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.
When two people are under the
influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of
passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited,
abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
If women were as fastidious as men,
morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.
A life spent making mistakes is not
only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing
Money is the most important thing
in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as
conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace,
meanness, and ugliness.
He never does a proper thing
without giving an improper reason for it.
The people who get on in this world
are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they
can't find them, make them.
Patriotism is a pernicious,
psychopathic form of idiocy.
back to top
A pessimist is a man who thinks
everybody is as nasty as himself.
The seven deadly sins... food,
clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift
those seven millstones from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar
until the millstones are lifted.
Common people do not pray; they
only beg.
All progress is initiated by
challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing
institutions.
Better never than late.
No question is so difficult to
answer as that which the answer is obvious.
Well, dearie, men have to do some
awfully mean things to keep up their respectability. But you can't blame them
for that, can you?
What is the matter with the poor is
poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.
A Native American elder once
described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two
dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog
fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a
moment and replied, The one I feed the most.
back to top
We live in an atmosphere of shame.
We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our
relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience,
just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.
When Satan makes impure verses,
Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.
Success covers a multitude of
blunders.
What we want is to see the child in
pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Though I can make my extravaganzas
appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.
Better keep yourself clean and
bright. You are the window through which you must see the world.
The only man I know who behaves
sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The
rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
When I was a young man I observed
that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure,
so I did ten times more work.
Even the youngest of us may be
wrong sometimes.
back to top
