With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter.

The superfluous is very necessary.

The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute for intelligence.

There is a limit to the admiration we may hold for a man who spends his waking hours poking the contents of chickens with a stick.

The shortest distance between two points is under construction.

The nearer to the church, the further from God.

The problem that we thought was a problem was, indeed, a problem, but not the problem we thought was the problem.

Were there no women, men might live like gods.

If there were a school for, say, sheet metal workers, that after three years left its graduates as unprepared for their careers as does law school, it would be closed down in a minute, and no doubt by lawyers.

They can't stop us... we're on a mission from God!

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

Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.

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

Never have so many understood so little about so much.

If you live in New York, even if you're Catholic, you're Jewish.

"And Bezel saideth unto Sham: `Sham,' he saideth, `Thou shalt goest unto the town of Begorrah, and there thou shalt fetcheth unto thine bosom 35 talents, and also shalt thou fetcheth a like number of cubits, provideth that they are nice and fresh.'"

Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.

Fear is the greatest salesman.

I'm glad I was not born before tea.

There are many of us in this old world of ours who hold that things break about even for all of us. I have observed, for example, that we all get about the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summer and the poor get it in the winter.

Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake?

"Hey, Sam, how about a loan?" "Whattaya need?" "Oh, about $500." "Whattaya got for collateral?" "Whattaya need?" "How about an eye?"

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.

Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them WHAT to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

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

When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar."

"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."

I just asked myself... what would John DeLorean do?

Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.

"She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing, you should hear me play piano.'"

If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.

The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.

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

It's not easy, being green.

All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

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.

Five bicycles make a volkswagen, seven make a truck.

When the blind lead the blind they will both fall over the cliff.

We can embody the truth, but we cannot know it.

For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.

A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!

We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a French restaurant. [...] I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk w

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

I don't have any use for bodyguards, but I do have a specific use for two highly trained certified public accountants.

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

Facts, apart from their relationships, are like labels on empty bottles.

Sometimes, too long is too long.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here!

What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you.

Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.

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'

The public demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no certainties.

Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game - it, and high taxes.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

Work Hard. Rock Hard. Eat Hard. Sleep Hard. Grow Big. Wear Glasses If You Need 'Em.

When you're in command, command.

Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now it's complete because it's ended here."

There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.

Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities, requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by tur

You tread upon my patience.

In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment was expressed by Thomas K. Co

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.

It is bad luck to be superstitious.

Must I hold a candle to my shames?

The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Your chances of getting hit by lightning go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say, "Storms suck!"

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.

In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.

You have all eternity to be cautious in when you're dead.

Adde parvum parvo manus acervus erit. [Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]

Ten persons who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it.

I didn't believe in reincarnation in any of my other lives. I don't see why I should have to believe in it in this one.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact...

Too much is just enough.

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

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

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of thirty-five.

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.

As to Jesus of Nazareth... I think the system of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissent

This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his

Home is where the hurt is.

How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?

I shot an arrow in to the air, and it stuck.

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

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.

To generalize is to be an idiot.

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out.

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

In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

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

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.

It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.

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

If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

Naked children have never played in _o_u_r fountains, and I.M. Pei will never be happy on Route 66.

A snake lurks in the grass.

There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.

It is better to have loved and lost

... a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you were a High-Class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker and a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence and enabled you to handle Bigger Propositions.

War hath no fury like a non-combatant.

When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.

The better part of valor is discretion.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each

One big pile is better than two little piles.

"A Mormon is a man that has the bad taste and the religion to do what a good many other people are restrained from doing by conscientious scruples and the police."

Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.

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

The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, cr

Every cloud engenders not a storm.