When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never

Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade, since it consists principally of dealings with men.

"Spare no expense to save money on this one."

... before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes s

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.

Events are not affected, they develop.

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.

I never deny, I never contradict. I sometimes forget.

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

Yet creeds mean very little, Coth answered the dark god, still speaking almost gently. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

You can't depend on the man who made the mess to clean it up.

Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.

The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal. The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may experience it as such. Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and thinking: all the rest of the worl

Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war, you can only be killed once.

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me that I may s

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve.

For courage mounteth with occasion.

You won't skid if you stay in a rut.

A highly intelligent man should take a primitive woman. Imagine if on top of everything else, I had a woman who interfered with my work.

Every cloud engenders not a storm.

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.

There's small choice in rotten apples.

The ripest fruit falls first.

I will make you shorter by the head.

What a bonanza! An unknown beginner to be directed by Lubitsch, in a script by Wilder and Brackett, and to play with Paramount's two superstars, Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert, and to be beaten up by both of them!

We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say socialism?

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

A is for Apple.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

Let me take you a button-hole lower.

When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire.

When in doubt, use brute force.

Time as he grows old teaches all things.

Prizes are for children.

He who fears the unknown may one day flee from his own backside.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm.

Every country has the government it deserves.

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

"You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten."