Every morning I take out my bankbook, stare at it, shudder – and turn quickly to my typewriter.
Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.
Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions.
God cannot be solemn, or he would not have blessed man with the incalculable gift of laughter.
A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
We must become masters of our own actions and attitudes. To let another person determine whether we will be rude or gracious, elated or depressed is to give control of ourselves. The only true possession is self possession.
Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery while on a detour. Happiness is a direction, not a place.
By the time a man asks you for advice, he has generally made up his mind what he wants to do, and is looking for confirmation rather than counseling.
As long as there are human beings, there will be the idea of brotherhood – and an almost total inability to practice it.
The principal difference between love and hate is that love is a irradiation, and hate is a concentration. Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the object of its hatred.
There is no such thing as an “atrocity” in warfare that is greater than the atrocity of warfare itself.
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, but the perpetual human predicament is that the answer soon poses its own problems.
An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
As the horsepower in modern automobiles steadily rises, the congestion of traffic steadily lowers the average possible speed of your car. This is known as Progress.
More trouble is caused in this world by indiscreet answers than by indiscreet questions.
If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, “You Only Live Once.”
The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely – which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.
But what is significant is that if you don’t want to like and accept somebody, one excuse is as good as another. The objective facts don’t matter, and the reasons are never as ‘reasonable’ as we like to think they are.
Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.