Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When a man hangs from a tree it doesn't spell justice unless he helped write the law that hanged him.
A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.
There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another.
A schoolchild should be taught grammar—for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.
People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.
The only sense that is common in the long run, is the sense of change and we all instinctively avoid it.
Even now; with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt. I still feel a memorial chill on casting off.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
No matter what changes take place in the world, or in me, nothing ever seems to disturb the face of spring.
Shocking writing is like murder: the questions the jury must decide are the questions of motive and intent.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.
Is there anything in the universe more beautiful and protective than the simple complexity of a spider's web?
Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.
Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.
We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.
Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.
Thurber did not write the way a surgeon operates, he wrote the way a child skips rope, the way a mouse waltzes.
It sometimes takes days, even weeks, before a dog's nerves tire. In the case of terriers it can run into months.
I can only assume that your editorial writer tripped over the First Amendment and thought it was the office cat.
If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.
Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
Advice to young writers wo want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don't write about Man, write about a man.
An editor is a person who knows more about writing than writers do but who has escaped the terrible desire to write.
The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called "prophylaxis" in New York.
In a man's middle years there is scarcely a part of the body he would hesitate to turn over to the proper authorities.
Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning.
By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.
Children hold spring so tightly in their brown fists-just as grownups, who are less sure of it, hold it in their hearts.
All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.
It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn't catch the remark because I wasn't paying attention.
Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.
Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.
A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.
A writer's style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias...it is the Self escaping into the open.
Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.
Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.
A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there in a book, you may have your question answered
A good many of the special words of business seem designed more to express the user's dreams than to express a precise meaning.
The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it.
A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.
Our vegetable garden is coming along well, with radishes and beans up, and we are less worried about revolution that we used to be.
English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education - sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.
In middle life, the human back is spoiling for a technical knockout and will use the flimsiest excuse, even a sneeze, to fall apart.
The terror of the atom age is not the violence of the new power but the speed of man's adjustment to it, the speed of his acceptance.
It is by all odds the loftiest of cities. It even managed to reach the highest point in the sky at the lowest moment of the depression.
The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.