Quotes, Quotations and Sayings

I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.

The chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.

The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

Man does not live by soap alone; and hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it -- or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.

Our civilization has decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.

One may understand the Cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. He is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

People in high life are hardened to the wants and distresses of mankind as surgeons are to their bodily pains.

No man knows he is young while he is young.

I believe in getting into hot water. I think it keeps you clean.

A stiff apology is a second insult. The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist see what he has come to see.

One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.

Keith: "What can I have for lunch?" Katie, who just cut herself: "Crap!

Virtue is not the absense of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers virtue is a vivid and separate ting, like pain or a particular smell.

The most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men.

Youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged.

Women prefer to talk in twos, while men prefer to talk in threes.

A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon.

Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them. They have a sort of permanent intoxication from within, a sort of invisible champagne. Americans do not need to drink to inspire them to do anything, though they do sometimes, I think, need a little for the deeper and more delicate purpose of teaching them how to do nothing.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

Materialists and madmen never have doubts.

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.

That the public can grow accustomed to any face is proved by the increasing prevalence of Keith's ruined physiognomy on TV documentaries and chat shows, as familiar and homely a horror as Grandpa in The Munsters.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery He has not been broken in two by time he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul, but his life.

Their is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

It is as healthy to enjoy sentiment as to enjoy jam.

The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords. Lords without anger and honor, who dare not carry their swords. They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes; They look at our labor and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.

Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem.

Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.

You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it.

The golden age only comes to men when they have forgotten gold.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalized.

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

My country wrong or right, is like saying my mother, drunk or sober.

My country, right or wrong, is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, My mother, drunk or sober.