Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Ladies and gentlemen are supposed to be looked after by others, like children and pets.
If you insist on asking me why I feel the way I do, I plan to take the Fifth Amendment.
It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.
Living alone is good for privacy, bad for full-scale cooking and moving heavy furniture.
Children must be protected not because they are innocent but because they are powerless.
I criticize myself ruthlessly, but never mention the faults of which I am truly ashamed.
Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.
The etiquette of romantic love is as elaborate as that surrounding the Emperor of China.
Machismo makes no provision for preparing lunch, doing the laundry, or minding the baby.
Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.
Self-realization is a comedown from salvation, but still gives us something to hope for.
Proverbial wisdom counsels against risk and change. But sitting ducks fare worst of all.
Never trust the judgment of an enthusiastic man; never trust the promises of a lazy one.
To avoid tripping on the chain of the past, you have to pick it up and wind it about you.
Neat trick: to be roused to ambition and reconciled to one's mediocrity at the same time.
In ethics, prudence is not an important virtue, but in the world it is almost everything.
Beauty and virtue: the most kissable ass in the world is no guarantee of good intentions.
I would like to be a figment of my own imagination, but belly and bowels will not permit.
Reason enables us to get around in the world of ideas, but cannot prescribe our thoughts.
Great talkers are trying to fill the gap between themselves and others, but only widen it.
Political correctness is driving machismo underground and recalling effeminacy from exile.
The cues that arouse desire are changed by Fashion, but feel like the proddings of Nature.
The realist lies for advantage. The fantasist lies to give his dreams a flavor of reality.
Like a frog, the aphorist waits for something to fly by that he can catch with his tongue.
Expensive advertising courts us with hints and images. The ordinary kind merely says, Buy.
The man of sensibility is too busy talking about his feelings to have time for good deeds.
Sometimes I discover I have changed my mind because I have forgotten what I used to think.
Retirement requires the invention of a new hedonism, not a return to the hedonism of youth
All anger feels like righteous anger; sorrow does not care whether it is righteous or not.
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
The madness of love can always be suspended--to cook dinner or catch a plane, for instance.
Astrology: do we make a hullabaloo among the stars, or do they make a hullabaloo down here?
Listen to what people say about themselves; they will tell you everything you need to know.
Irony dissolves sentiment, but occasionally a sentiment is strong enough to dissolve irony.
As I criss-cross the city hurrying, I feel always the unchanging cold beneath the pavement.
Street sign: Ho Hum Road & Easy Street In retirement, I look for days off from my days off.
My intentions go one way, my desires another. Thus I feel both self-indulgent and deprived.
Looking backward at what has been lost, I feel sad, then indifferent, and at last relieved.
Was there a little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?
Posterity--the forlorn child of nineteenth century optimism--grows ever harder to conceive.
The closeups of pornography make human genitals look like undiscovered prehistoric animals.
Even the most abject have a sense of superiority based on powerful though undefined merits.
Finding a thought for an aphorism is not hard. Putting a kink in its tail is the hard part.
Every book teaches a lesson, even if the lesson is only that one has chosen the wrong book.
To be thoroughly modern, an aphorism should trail off vaguely rather than coming to a point.
Loneliness is more likely to lead to fussy housekeeping than to grand views of the Universe.
Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children.
When love and adventure are finished, it's nice to have getting and spending to fall back on.
My taking a seat on the Council of the Fathers caused a desperate fluttering among my ghosts.
The poor live slow and hard; the rich, fast and easy. The rest of us shuffle along as we may.