Quotes
"Do you understand," said the other, "that this is a tragedy?"
"Perfectly," replied Syme; "always be comic in a tragedy. What the deuce else can you do?"
Four out of the five rich men in this town … are common swindlers. I suppose the proportion is pretty equal all over the world.
We say that the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher. Compared to him, burglars and bigamists are essentially moral men; my heart goes out to them. They accept the essential ideal of man; they merely seek it wrongly. Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it. But philosophers dislike property as property; they wish to destroy the very idea of personal possession.
Then he tried to blast my claims intellectually. I countered that by a very simple dodge. Whenever he said something that nobody but he could understand, I replied with something which I could not even understand myself.
The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.
But I believe without any doubt at all that our greatest good fortune was that even in the most extreme difficulties we might lose our patience but never our sense of humor.
Every minute with a child takes seven minutes off your life.
Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn't rip off.
"There are no two men in this world more similar than you and him," she told me. "And that's the worst thing for having a conversation."
Because for you, quitting smoking would be like killing someone you love.
The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?
I care not who hoes the lettuce of my country if I can eat the salad!
