Archives - October 2010

Ability will never catch up with the demand for it.

Attitudes are contagious. Are yours worth catching?

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain
stupid.

When someone tells you something defies description, you can be
pretty sure he's going to have a go at it anyway.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well,
poetry is just the ash.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and
took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the
reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

I've learned that you can't have everything and do everything at
the same time.

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought
without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it
will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining
where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy.

Great scientific discoveries have been made by men seeking to
verify quite erroneous theories about the nature of things.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work...I want to
achieve it through not dying.

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow
is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and
then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But
ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion.

What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by
death.

Grasp your opportunities, no matter how poor your health;
nothing is worse for your health than boredom.

Learning is finding out what you already know, Doing is
demonstrating that you know it, Teaching is reminding others that
they know it as well as you do. We are all learners, doers, and
teachers.

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and
experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come
later.

When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a
half.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency.
An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

A good book should leave you...slightly exhausted at the end. You
live several lives while reading it.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

As you grow older, you'll find the only things you regret are the
things you didn't do.

If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it,
change the way you think about it.

I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you
are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a
book about it.

One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.

People don't change. Only their costumes do.

Culture is roughly anything we do and the monkeys don't.

We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public.

Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is
funnier.

Halloween wraps fear in innocence,
As though it were a slightly sour sweet.
Let terror, then, be turned into a treat...

Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up
against falsehood, as oil does above water.