Robert A. Heinlein

Quotes

  1. Jealousy is a disease; love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often confuses one for the other, or assumes the greater the love, the greater the jealousy. In fact they are almost incompatible; both at once produce unbearable turmoil.

  2. Live each golden moment as if it were eternity — without fear, without hope, but with a sybaritic gusto.

  3. "Is there more than one Berquist?"

    "Maybe not; he is something of a bastard."

  4. He had long ago made a pact with himself to postulate a Created Universe on even-numbered days, a tail-swallowing eternal-and-uncreated Universe on odd-numbered days — since each hypothesis, while equally paradoxical, neatly avoided the paradoxes of the other — with, of course, a day off each leap year for sheer solipsist debauchery. (UC)

  5. Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

  6. The essence of the discipline is, first, self-awareness, then, self control.

  7. With water of life we grow closer.

  8. Thou art God. May you always drink deep May you never be thirsty.

  9. "This poor ersatz Martian is saying that sex is a way to be happy. Sex should be a means of happiness. Ben, the worst thing about sex is that we use it to hurt each other. It ought never to hurt; it should bring happiness, or at least pleasure.

    "The code says, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.' The result? Reluctant chastity, bitterness, blows and sometimes murder, broken homes and twisted children — and furtive little passes degrading to woman and man. Is this Commandment ever obeyed? If a man swore on his own Bible that he refrained from coveting his neighbor's wife because the code forbade it, I would suspect either self-deception or subnormal sexuality. Any man virile enough to sire a child has coveted many women, whether he acts or not.

    "Now comes Mike and says: 'There is no need to covet my wife... love her! There's no limit to her love, we have everything to gain — and nothing to lose but fear and guilt and hatred and jealousy.' The proposition is incredible. So far as I recall only pre-civilization Eskimos were this naive — and they were so isolated that they were almost 'Men from Mars' themselves. But we gave them our 'virtues' and now they have chastity and adultery just like the rest of us."

  10. Aquafraternally yours,

  11. God forgives necessity.

  12. Mike is like the first man to discover fire. Fire was there all along — after he showed them how, anybody could use it… anybody with sense enough not to get burned with it.