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

A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.

Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high spirits.

Fortune and love befriend the bold.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

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

IV. The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken. Such an object is inevitably price

The shortest distance between two points is under construction.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.

If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on t

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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.

Things are not always what they seem.

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.

In the long run we are all dead.

We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they remain fixed, then with good laws that are constantly being altered, that the lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness th

I do not patronize poor, ill educated, or disenfranchised people by exempting them from the same critical examination I feel free to direct toward the rest of society, however much I might champion the same minority or disadvantaged group in the foru

The sky is blue so we know where to stop mowing.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

A man's house is his castle.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

"Well, it's garish, ugly, and derelicts have used it for a toilet. The rides are dilapidated to the point of being lethal, and could easily maim or kill innocent little children." "Oh, so you don't like it?" "Don't like it? I'm CRAZY for it."

"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth.

The Worst Jury A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when one juror revealed that he was completely deaf and did not have the remotest clue what was happening. The judge, Mr. Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any

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

The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change. These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

It is through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously lives, works and has his being.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

She applies her lipstick in spite of its contents: "greasy rouge, containing crushed and dried insect corpses for coloring, beeswax for stiffness, and olive oil to help it flow - the latter having the unfortunate tendency to go rancid several hours a

I went to a Grateful Dead Concert and they played for SEVEN hours. Great song.

I stick my neck out for nobody.

When alerted to an intrusion by tinkling glass or otherwise, 1) Calm yourself 2) Identify the intruder 3) If hostile, kill him. Step number 3 is of particular importance. If you leave the guy alive out of misguided softheartedness, he will repay y

All religions issue Bibles against Satan, and say the most injurious things against him, but we never hear his side.

Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win.

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.

After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon to be created." "This is true," He replied.

Beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.

With women, I've got a long bamboo pole with a leather loop on the end of it. I slip the loop around their necks so they can't get away or come too close. Like catching snakes.

Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations Various signs in Poland: Right turn toward immediate outside. Go soothingly in the snow, as there lurk the ski demons. Five o'clock tea at all hours. In a men's washroom in Sidney:

Art is a jealous mistress.

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

A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Indiana is a state dedicated to basketball. Basketball, soybeans, hogs and basketball. Berkeley, needless to say, is not nearly as athletic. Berkeley is dedicated to coffee, angst, potholes and coffee.

He who writes with no misspelled words has prevented a first suspicion on the limits of his scholarship or, in the social world, of his general education and culture.

Sorry 'bout that sweat, honey. That's just holy water.

Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult.

"Plaese porrf raed."

The big cities of America are becoming Third World countries.

The man-hating woman, like the cold woman, is largely imaginary. She is simply a woman who has done her best to snare a man and has failed.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

Let your conscience be your guide.

Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than being flat broke and having a stomach ache.

Big book, big bore.

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

"What the hell are you getting so upset about? I thought you didn't believe in God." "I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears, "but the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid Go

Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives.

The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted.

Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.

You can't run away forever, But there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start.

It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they kill me. You're talking about the American way of survival of the fittest.

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be avoided at all costs.

By perseverance the snail reached the Ark.

Nothing succeeds like success.

If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and superficial answer is not far to seek. ... The

All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard, ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.

San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.

When the sun shineth, make hay.

The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.

It's very glamorous to raise millions of dollars, until it's time for the venture capitalist to suck your eyeballs out.

'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky!

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

The first requisite for immortality is death.

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

There is always something new out of Africa.

Force has no place where there is need of skill.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

What kind of sordid business are you on now? I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?

The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.

Why does a hearse horse snicker, hauling a lawyer away?

Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

The only "ism" Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.

We are giving instruction to FBI agents in the various Chinese dialects ... to handle present and likely future contingencies.

What excuses stand in your way? How can you eliminate them?

Producers seem to be so prejudiced against actors who've had no training. And there's no reason for it. So what if I didn't attend the Royal Academy for twelve years? I'm still a professional trying to be the best actress I can. Why doesn't anyone

I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, fo

There are no answers, only cross-references.

The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his memos.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women you've got in the house.