Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.
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An autobiography is an obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.
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When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe
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Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance. Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
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A gentleman doesn't pounce he glides. If a woman sits on a piece of furniture which permits your sitting beside her, you are free to regard this as an invitation, though not an unequivocal one.
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In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
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One should always be wary of anyone who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend.
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Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously. Adultery Phooey You should never subjugate yourself to another nor seek the subjugation of someone else to yourself. If you follow that Crispian principle you will be able to say 'Phooey,' too, instead of reaching for your gun when you fancy yourself betrayed.
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The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
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I recommend limiting one's involvement in other people's lives to a pleasantly scant minimum. This may seem too stoical a position in these madly passionate times, but madly passionate people rarely make good on their madly passionate promises.
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The continued propinquity of another human being cramps the style after a time unless that person is somebody you think you love. Then the burden becomes intolerable at once.
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Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.
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Life is a game in which the rules are constantly changing; nothing spoils a game more than those who take it seriously. Adultery? Phooey! You should never subjugate yourself to another nor seek the subjugation of someone else to yourself. If you follow that Crispian principle you will be able to say Phooey, too, instead of reaching for your gun when you fancy yourself betrayed.
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For flavor, instant sex will never supercede the stuff you have to peel and cook.
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Even holligans marry, though they know that marriage is but for a little while. It is alimony that is forever.
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The poverty from which I have suffered could be diagnosed as Soho poverty. It comes from having the airs and graces of a genius and no talent.
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Because it is in the nature of things that they become extreme, we have passed down from manliness to cruelty. If I had been told when I was 20 that there was a tavern in the town where the brave and the cruel were gathered together, I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said: If you truly love me, kill the bartender.
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Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.
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Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.
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Decency...must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.
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Life was a funny thing that occured on the way to the grave.
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Treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.
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The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
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Nothing more rapidly inclines a person to go into a monastery than reading a book on etiquette. There are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin.
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The young always have the same problem -- how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
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To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
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Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation to which the filing system has been lost?
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Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation of which the filing system has been lost?
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In chess we find several quite crisp distinctions that can also be discerned rather more problematically in the larger game of life. There are...
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Health consists of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.
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