Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.
It is not only useless, it is harmful, to believe in oneself until one truly knows oneself. And to know oneself means to accept our moments of insanity, of eccentricity, of childishness and blindness.
Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.
It may be true that the weak will always be driven to the wall; but it is the task of a just society to see that the wall is climbable.
The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere; it is not this sort of license that distinguishes New York. It is rather, a lust of the total ego for recognition, even for eminence. More than elsewhere, everybody here wants to be somebody.
Filth is always a sign of weakness – in the mouth of the user and in the mind of the writer.
A truly successful person knows how to overcome the past, use the present, and prepare for the future-but unless we can first surmount the past, we cannot effectively cope with either the present or the future.
Gourmet: Usually little more than a glutton festooned with credit cards.
We believe what we want to believe, what we like to believe, what suits our prejudices and fuels our passions.
The paradox of friendship is that it is both the strongest thing in the world and the most fragile. Wild horses cannot separate friends, but whining words can. A man will lay down his life for his friend but will not sacrifice his eardrums.
Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.
Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.
Never take the advice of someone who has not had your kind of trouble.
A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. “I got it from my good judgment,” he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? “I got it from my bad judgment.”
When we have “second thoughts” about something, our first thoughts don’t seem like thoughts at all – just feelings.
All significant achievement comes from daring from experiment from the willingness to risk failure.
When a baseball player makes an error, it goes into the record and is published. How many of us could stand this sort of daily scrutiny?
Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.
The truest test of independent judgment is being able to dislike someone who admires us, and to admire someone who dislikes us.
All our efforts to attain immortality-by statesmanship, by conquest, by science or the arts-are equally vain in the long run, because the long run is longer than any of us can imagine.