Archives - November 2006

I believe in stories. The world has enough dogma.

For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.

Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.

Millions and millions of years would still not give me half enough time to describe that tiny instant of all eternity when you put your arms around me and I put my arms around you.

It's a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

What is reality anyway? It's nothing but a collective hunch.

The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory.

You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door.

To know when to be generous and when to be firm --- this is wisdom.

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.

Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Insanity --- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.

By words the mind is winged.

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

If you can't convince them, confuse them.

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.

Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow.

Noncooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.