Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Procrastination and impatience form a system of checks and balances.
Either offer me something I really like, or stop trying to tempt me.
The Muses inspire art and pretend not to notice when Mammon buys it.
Good books do not make people wiser or happier--only more conscious.
Unlike life, when books become meaningless, they are making a point.
Lechery is secretive, but must finally reveal itself to at least one.
By the time I have clarified a thought, I no longer want to think it.
Contempt for others, like masturbation, is best as a secret pleasure.
The past is ignorant of the present. Be careful in taking its advice.
The Olympian gods cannot have grand passions because they cannot die.
Promiscuity: optimism, free enterprise, mobility--the American Dream.
Complainers rule out happiness, mentioning it only as something lost.
In the game of love, the losers are more celebrated than the winners.
The aphorism: a platitude that swerves, or slides all the way around.
People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.
Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed.
Health foods make promises that only the Second Coming could fulfill.
Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.
I do not remember joy or sorrow in childhood, but listening for clues.
Comedy is hostile to profundity, and brings everything to the surface.
Three people marooned on a desert island would soon reinvent politics.
Language is the friendliest of the things from which we cannot escape.
Pedagogical romances leave the mentor disgruntled, the pupil confused.
Lovers do all the talking and writing. What are the Beloveds thinking?
Young girls giggle with nervous delight at the erections they inspire.
Whether I give to a beggar or not, his existence puts me in the wrong.
The Ordinary Life: the misery seems planned, the happiness accidental.
Orgies are an early form of what will someday become sex by committee.
Innocence: I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path.
The aphorism wants to be at the same time both main line and off beat.
Don Juan tries not to see the skeptical winks that greet his boasting.
A sense of righteousness is even more dangerous than a violent temper.
Self-absorption intensifies isolation, but permits it to go unnoticed.
Nothing is more cheerful than talking about our friends' shortcomings.
As a youth, I sought out decadence; as an elder, I try to avoid decay.
Laughing at our friends, we avenge the disappointment they have caused.
As every cockroach knows, thriving on poisons is the secret of success.
Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.
True self is the part of us that does not change when circumstances do.
Reading gives you some place to go when you have to stay where you are.
Suffering teaches us only that we suffer. Joy shows us which way to go.
A laughing Lear would be monstrous. Not so a laughing Romeo and Juliet.
Dreams are distorted representations of desire. So are dream- analyses.
When you feel protective toward your parents, you have become an adult.
I have a special grudge against those who have the same faults as I do.
Inevitably, almost everything we say is either quotation or paraphrase.
Awakening in the morning returns us to life, and to awareness of death.
It is hard to speak of sex without being clinical, brutal, or romantic.
A quiet well-behaved boy is likely to be both frightened and ambitious.
I dream of summing everything up in the greatest sentence ever written.