There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the long winter evenings.

Where there is much light there is also much shadow.

You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to run much faster.

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.

I need another lawyer like I need another hole in my head.

God helps them that help themselves.

No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.

Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations. He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open market. If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarri

The 'A' is for content, the 'minus' is for not typing it. Don't ever do this to my eyes again.

Acting is not very hard. The most important things are to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. And if I have to laugh, well, I think of my sex life.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H.

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

No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.

He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.

Since everything in life is but an experience perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.

For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.

An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

NEW YORK

Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way.

"Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun."

As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.

It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle, nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the r

You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to

Every cloud engenders not a storm.

Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

There's no justice in this world.

...He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating.

The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.

Whom the mad would destroy, first they make Gods.

The state of innocence contains the germs of all future sin.

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if only words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.

One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is a

It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the municipality.

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.

There's no such thing as an original sin.

When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.

You can observe a lot just by watching.

"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.

Here's to women. Would that we could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.

I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole.

One of my favorite jokes, a telling commentary on Jewish mothers' capacity to lay on guilt, involves the mother who gave her son two neckties on Chanuka. The boy hurried into his bedroom, ripped off the tie he was wearing, put on one of the ties his

I think... I think it's in my basement... Let me go upstairs and check.

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

According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much. Because we know that we could beat up their

It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it.

Never promise more than you can perform.

"Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest."

Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.

I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark.

Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.

Think lucky. If you fall in a pond, check your pockets for fish.

Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.

If a man has a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism.

The superfluous is very necessary.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

A kind of Batman of contemporary letters.

... 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

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.

If a thing's worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

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.

I'll burn my books.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

The last vestiges of the old Republic have been swept away.

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.

When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

What we do not understand we do not possess.

Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two points.

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.

If reporters don't know that truth is plural, they ought to be lawyers.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know that it is money.

Things are more like they are today than they ever were before.

What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? Everything that is born of weakness. Not contentedness but more power; not peace but war; not virtue but fitness. The weak and the

To restore a sense of reality, I think Walt Disney should have a Hardluckland.

A witty saying proves nothing.

The meek shall inherit the earth, but *not* its mineral rights.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

When you are at Rome live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.

Life is the living you do, Death is the living you don't do.

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours.

Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners. In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the original earth clinging to the roots.

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

It has long been noticed that juries are pitiless for robbery and full of indulgence for infanticide. A question of interest, my dear Sir! The jury is afraid of being robbed and has passed the age when it could be a victim of infanticide.

No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at large.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

If I had any humility I would be perfect.

Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever depths they were once able to plumb.

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Cold is God's way of teling us to burn more Catholics.

The Bible says that woman was the last thing God made. Evidently He made her on Saturday night. She reveals his fatigue.

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.

We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.

There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

English literature's performing flea.

... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *___did* quote anybody in this business, it probably would be gibberish.

The nearer to the church, the further from God.

When the English language gets in my way, I walk over it.

We are what we pretend to be.

Just close your eyes, tap your heels together three times, and think to yourself, `There's no place like home.'

Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the men are strong, the women are pretty, and the children are above-average.

If the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust, this would be a better world.