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

When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.

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

Never promise more than you can perform.

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

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest r

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.

Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even worse.

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

There is always one thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.

A non-vegetarian anti-abortionist is a contradiction in terms.

British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.

With all the talent around, it's sort of amazing that a woman could be up here with us.

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

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

She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.

Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.

Believe everything you hear about the world; nothing is too impossibly bad.

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.

"... all the modern inconveniences ..."

One thing I have no worry about is whether God exists. But it has occurred to me that God has Alzheimer's and has forgotten we exist.

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.

When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is metaphysics.

A kind of Batman of contemporary letters.

I'm glad I was not born before tea.

A is for Apple.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.

The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not c

Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a governor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and the reason you'll be reading about him is tha

L'hazard ne favorise que l'esprit prepare.

an idiot politically. But the designations may be good business for war veterans. Having bled for their country in 1861 and 1918, they have bled it all they could consequently. And why not?"

Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.

Law stands mute in the midst of arms.

"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.

The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own.

"Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing."

When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.

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