Fearful of sentimentality, I disown my tears and melting heart.

The hero used to be the one in white. Now he is harder to spot.

The wretchedness of failure is the great attraction of success.

Realism: the wealth of detail guarantees the truth of the tale.

If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.

Narcissus weeps to find that his Image does not return his love.

Not romance but companionship makes the happiness of daily life.

Liberal Doctrine: it is not children who misbehave, but parents.

Writing an upbeat aphorism is a temptation, but decorum forbids.

Our vices are attempts to combine self-medication and enjoyment.

Respectability is joining chastity in the museum of dead issues.

The popping of bubblegum discourages the most determined lecher.

The ugly can achieve an absoluteness beyond the reach of beauty.

The limitations of pleasure cannot be overcome by more pleasure.

The more powerless people are, the longer they are kept waiting.

Laughter and tears may not persuade, but they cannot be refuted.

If you should ever acknowledge my existence, I plan to snub you.

The Enlightenment needs more shadow; the Romantic Movement less.

Readers transform a library from a mausoleum into many theaters.

My love grows wide and shallow in an effort to spread my losses.

Reading more than life teaches us to recognize ethos and pathos.

Always clamping down on excitement is not self-control but fear.

Critics are more committed to the rules of art than artists are.

Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.

Stupidity is a fact of life, but unmentionable. The new Prudery.

Scepticism is always a back road leading to some credo or other.

When my beloved arrives, I yawn. When my beloved departs, I weep.

Natural Man, in our current version, is a disgruntled adolescent.

An event is not over until everyone is tired of talking about it.

Analysis is more likely to adjust evidence than to adjust itself.

Profusion gives pleasure up to a point; then we become squeamish.

The price of telling your troubles is having to listen to advice.

My father was a patriarch inside a matriarchy, but never knew it.

In the city, nudity means something; in the wild, it just exists.

Don't stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.

Intelligence is predatory, but full of fastidiousness and frights.

I really like life, don't you? There's nothing else quite like it.

Knowledge and power in the city; peace and decency in the country.

Money gives me more energy than all the Granola bars in the world.

Life is used up all the same, whether we save, spend, or waste it.

In comedy, the witty style wins out over every mishap of the plot.

If "there is no harm in asking," why guilt and fear when we do so?

The lover as baby is a less troubling idea than the baby as lover.

My aspiration now is to get by luck what I could not get by merit.

Vice is a dreary business. And virtue is not a lot of fun, either.

Scholars dream of finding small facts pregnant with great progeny.

Human society sustains itself by transforming nature into garbage.

Great talkers do not stop for breath, and never look at the clock.

Boredom turns to panic if my beloved leaves before the usual time.

If your nose is up in the air, you cannot see where you are going.

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