Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You cannot be anything if you want to be everything. But if you are content to be something, you may by analogy be many things.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn't make any sense if quoted as it stands.
Becoming eighty is a matter of life or death. I chose life. It is a much better position to be in, and it's easier on your back.
Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.
True wisdom is plenty of experience, observation, and reflection. False wisdom is plenty of ignorance, arrogance, and impudence.
If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I've written, I feel the day hasn't been totally wasted.
At the end of the day I'm writing comedy. If you get too realistic as a comedy writer with your disasters, it stops being funny.
A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.
They're hungry for something they know nothing about, but we, we know all too well that the price of fame is the loss of privacy.
The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many people believe in no God at all.
It's a wise man who profits by his own experience, but it's a good deal wiser one who lets the rattlesnake bite the other fellow.
It's not what we don't know that prevents us from succeeding; it's what we know that just ain't so that is our greatest obstacle.
Pride seems tew be quite equally distributed; the man who owns the carriage and the man who drives it seem tew have it just alike.
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
One of the easiest forms of pretense to break down is the pretense of enthusiasm for exotic foods. Just bring on the exotic foods.
Tomatoes and squash never fail to reach maturity. You can spray them with acid, beat them with sticks and burn them; they love it.
Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was.
A bad liver is to a Frenchman what a nervous breakdown is to an American. Everyone has had one and everyone wants to talk about it.
The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.
I've never made up events, but I've always been a big exaggerator. It's written on my humorist license that I'm allowed to do that.
I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.
I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven.
No form of government matters nearly as much as the spirit and intelligence brought to the administration of any form of government.
A great many people who spend their time mourning over the brevity of life could make it seem longer if they did a little more work.
Until mankind heeds the message on the Hebrew trumpet blown, and the faith of the whole world's people is the faith that is our own.
I never had a man come to me for advice yet, but what I soon discovered that he thought more of his own opinion than he did of mine.
I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take it personally.
When a man makes up his mind to become a rascal, he should examine himself closely and see if he isn't better constructed for a fool.
A man may take care of a furnace for twenty-five years and still forget to duck his head when he starts going down the cellar stairs.
This medal (the National Book Award) together with my American Express card, will identify me worldwide ... except at Bloomingdale's.
Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven't been taxed before.
Perhaps the little Negro girl was holding a concealed razor blade. Maybe she was one of the troublemakers out for a fresh white scalp.
I started writing when I was twenty. My first book came out when I was thirty-five. But I never expected that it would happen quickly.
The things that I can't have I want, And what I have seems second-rate, The things I want to do I can't, And what I have to do I hate.
Hunting after happiness is like hunting after a lost sheep in the wilderness--when you find it, the chances are that it is a skeleton.
England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up with a new game that they both can play. Like baseball, for example.
I've always had a way with the little people, making it a point to humor them without looking down my nose at their wasted empty lives.
The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear.
The more humble a man is before God the more he will be exalted; the more humble he is before man, the more he will get rode roughshod.
The easiest thing for our friends to discover in us, and the hardest thing for us to discover in ourselves, is that we are growing old.
My advice to those who are about to begin, in earnest, the journey of life, is to take their heart in one hand and a club in the other.
... I could have said something profound, but you would have forgotten it in 15 minutes - which is the afterlife of a graduation speech.
When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.
Persian pussy from over the sea demure and lazy and smug and fat none of your ribbons and bells for me ours is the zest of the alley cat
There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency; and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.
I would much rather always look forward to the time when I am going to ride in a carriage, than to look back on the time when I used to.
The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.
I never felt ostracized or made to feel strange by obsessing over The Onion or Calvin and Hobbes. That was considered completely normal.
Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.
There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.