| 4 April, 2009 |
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I know what love is: Tracy and Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall, Romeo and Juliet, Jackie and John and Marilyn.... Nowadays a citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter. The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf. The wages of sin are unreported. To a woman the first kiss is just the end of the beginning but to a man it is the beginning of the end. Discretion in speech is more than eloquence. Oh, what lies there are in kisses! Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. Dubito ergo sum - I doubt therefore I am. Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think they talk sense. 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. I shall be breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish you all. Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense. Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible - not to have run away. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. Man is a natural polygamist: he always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails. I am not young enough to know everything. The impotence of God is infinite. One of the simple but genuine pleasures in life is getting up in the morning and hurrying to a mousetrap you set the night before. Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does. There are more bad musicians than there is bad music. Only sick music makes money today. Every man is the architect of his own fortune. Music is essentially useless, as life is. Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country. A communist is a person who publicly airs his dirty Lenin. I honestly believe that in my lifetime we will see a country once again governed by Christians...and Christian values. What Christians have got to do is take back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time, and one state at a time. Judge: a law student who marks his own papers. Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed. I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character. I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell. I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens. Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them keeps paying for it. Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women. What you have when everyone wears the same playclothes for all occasions, is addressad by nickname, expected to participate in Show And Tell, and bullied out of any desire form privacy, is not democracy; it is kindergarten. No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. Any ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy. I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. Carlyle said, "A lie cannot live"; it shows he did not know how to tell them. A good listener is usually thinking about something else. My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably. America: the only country in the world where failing to promote yourself is regarded as being arrogant. Something ignoble, loathsome, undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the landscape itself. I love America. You always hurt the one you love. If thou are a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf. I passionately hate the idea of being with it. I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time. Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. Logic is like the sword: those who appeal to it shall perish by it. The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success. |
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