Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
They say a woman always remembers her first lover with affection; but perhaps she does not always remember him.
Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.
A dictator must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.
It might be that to surrender to happiness was to accept defeat, but it was a defeat better than many victories.
And I have the sunset, and the Tuscan wine, and the white teeth of the women in Rome. I am a traveler in Romance.
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.
I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.
The first duty of a woman is to be pretty, the second is to be well-groomed, and the third is never to contradict.
A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence.
I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.
Conscience is the guardian in the individual of the rules which the community has evolved for its own preservation.
Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.
You tend to close your eyes to truth, beauty and goodness because they give no scope to your sense of the ridiculous.
Dying is the most hellishly boresome experience in the world! Particularly when it entails dying of 'natural causes'.
There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain
Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.
It must be that to govern a nation you need a specific talent and that this may very well exist without general ability.
The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.
The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.
"Do you like card tricks?" "No, I hate card tricks," I answered. "Well, I`ll just show you this one." He showed me three.
Advice to first year medical students: In anatomy, it is better to have learned and lost than never to have learned at all.
Illusions are like umbrellas - you no sooner get them than you lose them, and the loss always leaves a little painful wound.
The audience is not the least important actor in the play and if it will not do its allotted share the play falls to pieces.
It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as your sense of the aesthetic. - Of Human Bondage
Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul.
It's always difficult to make conversation with a drunk, and there's no denying it, the sober are at a disadvantage with him.
A novelist must preserve a childlike belief in the importance of things which common sense considers of no great consequence.
When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself?
What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.
I have always been convinced that if a woman once made up her mind to marry a man, nothing but instant flight could save him.
I like manual labor. Whenever I've got waterlogged with study, I've taken a spell of it and found it spiritually invigorating.
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.
She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.
All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it's just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.
It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.
We find things beautiful because we recognize them and contrariwise we find things beautiful because their novelty surprises us.
It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set.
Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.
The artist can within limits make what he likes of his life... It is only the artist, and maybe the criminal, who can make his own.
You cannot write well or much (and I venture the opinion that you cannot write well unless you write much) unless you form a habit.
It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
Evil can be condoned only if in the beyond it is compensated by good and god himself needs immortality to vindicate his ways to man.
When married people don't get on they can separate, but if they're not married it's impossible. It's a tie that only death can sever.
We can none of us step into the same river twice, but the river flows on and the other river we step into is cool and refreshing, too
If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.