Archives - November 2002

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.

Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past.

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.

Some people read quotes for guidance, I read them to see if they are true.

The poet judges not as a judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

I'm the one who has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

We make war that we may live in peace.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling "Kilroy was here" on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

One discovers a friend by chance, and cannot but feel regret that 20 or 30 years of life may have been spent without the least knowledge of him.

I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Whoever you are, there is some younger person who thinks you are perfect. There is some work that will never be done if you don't do it. There is someone who would miss you if you were gone. There is a place that you alone can fill.

Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are.

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.

Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.