Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
It is a peculiarity of the American mind that it regards any excursion into the truth as an adventure into cynicism.
The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.
I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.
One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.
The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each armed with a fly-swatter.
The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.
The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.
Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.
In the United States, doing good has come to be, like patriotism, a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails.
At eight or nine, I suppose intelligence is no more than a small spot of light on the floor of a large and murky room.
Bridges would not be safer if only people who knew the proper definition of a real number were allowed to design them.
Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.
A church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to Heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.
The fact that a human brain of high amperage, otherwise highly efficient, may have a hole in it is surely not a secret.
Balloonists have an unsurpassed view of the scenery, but there is always the possibility that it may collide with them.
For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular.
In Baltimore, soft crabs are always fried (or broiled) in the altogether, with maybe a small jock-strap of bacon added.
A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.
Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.
Save among politicians it is no longer necessary for any educated American to profess belief in Thirteenth Century ideas
In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.
The most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air, is the reputation of being well-to-do.
My guess is that well over eighty per cent. of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almost purely agnostic. It trusts absolutely without professing to know at all.
When I hear artists or authors making fun of businessmen, I think of a regiment in which the band makes fun of the cooks.
Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.
Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody nose.
The war on privilege will never end. Its next grat campaign will be against the special privileges of the underprivileged.
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy.
The objection of the scandalmonger is not that she tells of racy doings, but that she pretends to be indignant about them.
The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.
It is my conviction that no normal man ever fell in love, within the ordinary meaning of the term, after the age of thirty.
The learned are seldom pretty fellows, and in many cases their appearance tends to discourage a love of study in the young.
It takes a long while for a naturally trustful person to reconcile himself to the idea that after all God will not help him
Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right.
The only liberty an inferior man really cherishes is the liberty to quit work, stretch out in the sun, and scratch himself.
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops