The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire.

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

In Hollywood, if you don't have happiness, you send out for it.

Roumanian-Yiddish cooking has killed more Jews than Hitler.

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.

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

New York now leads the world's great cities in the number of people around whom you shouldn't make a sudden move.

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

For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, each delved into a hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall was a gate.

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

The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.

Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.

The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.

A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."

"I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet

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

Dustin Farnum: Why, yesterday, I had the audience glued to their seats! Oliver Herford: Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of it!

Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.

It is not enough that I should succeed. Others must fail.

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

Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.

The Least Successful Executions History has furnished us with two executioners worthy of attention. The first performed in Sydney in Australia. In 1803 three attempts were made to hang a Mr. Joseph Samuels. On the first two of these the rope snap

In case of fire, stand in the hall and shout "Fire!"

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

They will only cause the lower classes to move about needlessly.

The better part of valor is discretion.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

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

How apt the poor are to be proud.

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

Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh... It will probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly builds to a blood-curdling maniacal scream... but still it will be a laugh.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

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

Moneyliness is next to Godliness.

If a man stay away from his wife for seven years, the law presumes the separation to have killed him; yet according to our daily experience, it might well prolong his life.

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

In breeding cattle you need one bull for every twenty-five cows, unless the cows are known sluts.

But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.

True leadership is the art of changing a group from what it is to what it ought to be.

It looks like it's up to me to save our skins. Get into that garbage chute, flyboy!

"I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"

And tomorrow will be like today, only more so.

I've got all the money I'll ever need if I die by 4 o'clock.

Leave no stone unturned.

A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.

You tread upon my patience.

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

Yes, I've now got this nice little apartment in New York, one of those L-shaped ones. Unfortunately, it's a lower case l.

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.

The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.

Goals... Plans... they're fantasies, they're part of a dream world...

We're only in it for the volume.

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

May you live in uninteresting times.

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

No two persons ever read the same book.

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.

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulse that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race.

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

I just got off the phone with Sonny Barger [President of the Hell's Angels]. He wants me to appear as a character witness for him at his murder trial and said he'd be glad to appear as a character witness on my behalf if I ever needed one. Needless

You k'n hide de fier, but w'at you gwine do wid de smoke?

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.

"Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers' every time someone writes `bible thumpers?'

"What's this? Trix? Aunt! Trix? You? You're after the prize! What is it?" He picked up the box and studied the back. "A glow-in-the-dark squid! Have you got it out of there yet?" He tilted the box, angling the little colored balls of cereal

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?

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.

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

Ninety percent of everything is crap.

Every cloud engenders not a storm.

Do not use that foreign word "ideals". We have that excellent native word "lies".

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader, but to protect the writer.

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.

I stick my neck out for nobody.

Big book, big bore.

Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.

A lie is an abomination unto the Lord and a very present help in time of trouble.

Woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists.

If a thing's worth having, it's worth cheating for.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

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

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

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".

We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major prohpet, nor Christians that Shinto

It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.

I paid a visit to my local precinct in Greenwich Village and asked a sergeant to show me some rape statistics. He politely obliged. That month there had been thirty-five rape complaints, an advance of ten over the same month for the previous year.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

The price of success in philosophy is triviality.

I have just enough white in me to make my honesty questionable.

Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations Sign on a cathedral in Spain: It is forbidden to enter a woman, even a foreigner if dressed as a man. Above the enterance to a Cairo bar: Unaccompanied ladies not admitted unless with husb

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.

Pauca sed matura. [Few but excellent.]

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Two wrongs are only the beginning.

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

NEW YORK

"Not only is God dead, but just try to find a plumber on weekends."

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

Confucius say too much.

If you want divine justice, die.

It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.

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.

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

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:

That Xanthippe's husband should have become so great a philosopher is remarkable. Amid all the scolding, to be able to think! But he could not write: that was impossible. Socrates has not left us a single book.

"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.'"

Watch your mouth, kid, or you'll find yourself floating home.

Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.

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

The course of true anything never does run smooth.

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.

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

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

There is no fool to the old fool.

A morgue is a morgue is a morgue. They can paint the walls with aggressively cheerful primary colors and splashy bold graphics, but it's still a holding place for the dead until they can be parted out to organ banks. Not that I would have cared nor

He knows not how to know who knows not also how to unknow.

This was the most unkindest cut of all.

A man is known by the company he organizes.

Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming.

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.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.