God gave man two ears and one tongue so that we listen twice as much as we speak.

When I have one foot in the grave I will tell the truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me, and say, "Do what you like now."

We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spirtual and emotional feelings. I

If you sell diamonds, you cannot expect to have many customers. But a diamond is a diamond even if there are no customers.

Haste makes waste.

I consider a new device or technology to have been culturally accepted when it has been used to commit a murder.

Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all.

We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the results of this evening's experiments. Astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on

"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"

You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.

The executioner is, I hear, very expert, and my neck is very slender.

The optimum committee has no members.

Grig (the navigator): ... so you see, it's just the two of us against the entire space armada. Alex (the gunner): What?!? Grig: I've always wanted to fight a desperate battle against overwhelming odds. Alex: It'll be a slaughter! Grig: That'

There are no answers, only cross-references.

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him.

"What are you watching?" "I don't know." "Well, what's happening?" "I'm not sure... I think the guy in the hat did something terrible." "Why are you watching it?" "You're so analytical. Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you."

Every young man should have a hobby: learning how to handle money is the best one.

Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

The only reward of virtue is virtue.

The longest part of the journey is said to be the passing of the gate.

Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.

I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.

Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get it back in.

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

It's easier to take it apart than to put it back together.

Who dat who say "who dat" when I say "who dat"?

Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.

Lay off the muses, it's a very tough dollar.

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash.

Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.

If what they've been doing hasn't solved the problem, tell them to do something else.

A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.

Real wealth can only increase.

The term "fire" brings up visions of violence and mayhem and the ugly scene of shooting employees who make mistakes. We will now refer to this process as "deleting" an employee (much as a file is deleted from a disk). The employee is simply there o

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.

Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and traps, his race survives

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.

Some women should be beaten regularly, like gongs.

There are two kinds of pedestrians... the quick and the dead.

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

You get what you pay for.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

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

Art is a jealous mistress.

A game can by God repent or we'll punish it. That's how they did it in Salem in the seventeenth century, and that's how we'll do it now.

Littering is dumb.

Ben, why didn't you tell me?

To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.

The farther you go, the less you know.

From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first.

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

A definition of teaching: casting fake pearls before real swine.

Dignity is like a flag. It flaps in a storm.

Divorce is a game played by lawyers.

The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

A good name lost is seldom regained. When character is gone, all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.

Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore,

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.

What we do not understand we do not possess.

An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as possible.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men

A priest asked: What is Fate, Master? And the Master answered: It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence. It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs. It is that which has caused nations to build bywa

Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin.

If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?" Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO inconsiderate."

The cart has no place where a fifth wheel could be used.

Why are you doing this to me? Because knowledge is torture, and there must be awareness before there is change.

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

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.

The old complaint that mass culture is designed for eleven-year-olds is of course a shameful canard. The key age has traditionally been more like fourteen.

Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as Mental Anguish. You would sue: * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions

A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out.

This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with great force.

If you are shooting under 80 you are neglecting your business; over 80 you are neglecting your golf.

With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law; and every time they make a law it's a joke.

The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes.

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

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked down upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

There's nothing worse for your business than extra Santa Clauses smoking in the men's room.

Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy.

Absolutum obsoletum. (If it works, it's out of date.)

There is no sin but ignorance.

In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, delve deep into the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In work, be competent. In action, be careful of your timing.

"There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial: both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him during the trial."

Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.

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.

Facts are the enemy of truth.

Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.

Business will be either better or worse.

There is no doubt that my lawyer is honest. For example, when he filed his income tax return last year, he declared half of his salary as 'unearned income.'

I love treason but hate a traitor.

Rome was not built in one day.

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

Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do the work.

A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.

Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?

IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's got to be a better way.

What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.

Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing.

While there's life, there's hope.

Who does not trust enough will not be trusted.

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

Sho' they got to have it against the law. Shoot, ever'body git high, they wouldn't be nobody git up and feed the chickens. Hee-hee.

One picture is worth more than ten thousand words.

At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all my soul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my ignorance upon the shore.

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

If we don't survive, we don't do anything else.

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

... but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witch

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

... 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.

Sic transit gloria mundi. [So passes away the glory of this world.]

The coast was clear.

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

The `loner' may be respected, but he is always resented by his colleagues, for he seems to be passing a critical judgment on them, when he may be simply making a limiting statement about himself.

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much better.

I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.

Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash.

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

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

Just once I would like to persuade the audience not to wear any article of blue denim. If only they could see themselves in a pair of brown corduroys like mine instead of this awful, boring blue denim. I don't enjoy the sky or sea as much as I used

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.

The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobb

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

One hundred women are not worth a single testicle.

If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. A more sententious, holding- forth old bore who expected every

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it.

A little bit of rape is good for a man's soul.

Men freely believe that what they wish to desire.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here.

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

The future is a race between education and catastrophe.

Princeton's taste is sweet like a strawberry tart. Harvard's is a subtle taste, like whiskey, coffee, or tobacco. It may even be a bad habit, for all I know.

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

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

If the ends don't justify the means, then what does?

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?

Your wig steers the gig.

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

Housework can kill you if done right.

If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average.

If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

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.

Hotels are tired of getting ripped off. I checked into a hotel and they had towels from my house.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

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

God instructs the heart, not by ideas, but by pains and contradictions.

"You boys lookin' for trouble?" "Sure. Whaddya got?"

There is no cure for birth and death other than to enjoy the interval.

Don't go to bed with no price on your head.

Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.

It doesn't matter whether you win or lose

The future not being born, my friend, we will abstain from baptizing it.

Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a decorous age.

The fact that it works is immaterial.

The Poems, all three hundred of them, may be summed up in one of their phrases: "Let our thoughts be correct".

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Thou hast seen nothing yet.

Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.

Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground

"The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain."

Sweet April showers do spring May flowers.

Well, the handwriting is on the floor.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The Worst Musical Trio There are few bad musicians who have a chance to give a recital at a famous concert hall while still learning the rudiments of their instrument. This happened about thirty years ago to the son of a Rumanian gentleman who was

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

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked down upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.

Suffering alone exists, none who suffer; The deed there is, but no doer thereof; Nirvana is, but no one is seeking it; The Path there is, but none who travel it.

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants.

The time spent on any item of the agenda [of a finance committee] will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.

All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.

Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your house, beca

No two persons ever read the same book.

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

Set the cart before the horse.

Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser.

What we wish, that we readily believe.

Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repainting.

The most delightful day after the one on which you buy a cottage in the country is the one on which you resell it.

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.