"She wears her clothes, as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork."

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

"I wanted to be out so I could relax and be me."

"I cannot be a good Catholic; I cannot go to heaven; and if a man is to go to the devil, he may as well go thither from the House of Lords as from any other place on earth."

"Nothing changed: the clouds would not be removed, nor his sons returned, nor his knowledge plenished. But there was this. His grief had become her grief, his sorrow her own. And though he grieved not one bit less for that, yet his heart made room for her, for her will and wisdom, and he bore the sorrow better."

"we parted each feeling
superior to the other and is not that
feeling after all one of the great
desiderata of social intercourse"

"Darling Laura, sweet whiskers, do try to write me better letters. Your last, dated 19 December received today, so eagerly expected, was a bitter disappointment. Do realize that a letter need not be a bald chronicle of events; I know you lead a dull life now, my heart bleeds for it, though I believe you could make it more interesting if you had the will. But that is no reason to make your letters as dull as your life."

"the men of science are talking
about the size and shape of the universe again
i thought i had settled that for them
years ago it is as big as you think it is
and it is spherical in shape
can you prove it isn't
it is round like a ball or an orange
providence made it that shape
so it would roll when he kicked it
and if you ask me how i know this
the answer is that that is just what
i would do myself"

"Bobby told Lucy, 'The world ain't round;
It drops off sharp at the edge of town.
Lucy, you know the world must be flat,
Cause when people leave town they never come back.'"

"Malunkyaputta, anyone who should say, 'I will not lead the religious life under the Blessed One until the Blessed One shall explain to me either that the world is eternal, or that the world is not eternal, that the world is finite, or that the world is infinite, that the soul and the body are identical, or that the soul is one thing and the body another, that the saint exists after death, or that the saint does not exist after death, that the saint both exists and does not exist after death, or that the saint neither exists nor does not exist after death'; -- that person would die, Malunkyaputta, before the Tathagata had ever explained this to him. ... And why, Malunkyaputta, have I not explained this? Because, Malunkyaputta, this profits not, nor has to do with the fundamentals of religion, nor tends to aversion, absence of passion, cessation, quiescence, the supernatural faculties, supreme wisdom, and Nirvana; therefore have I not explained it."

"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted in a profoundly sick society."

"My intelligence is on the genius level. And in case you don't realize it, most geniuses are crazy."

"See, the human mind is kind of like ... a pi�ata. When it breaks open, there's a lot of surprises inside. Once you get the pi�ata perspective, you see that losing your mind can be a peak experience."

"If we are going to teach 'creation science' as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction."

"It is not Goethe who creates Faust, but Faust which creates Goethe."

"There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire."

"They mistook talent for art. One must work. Art was more than inspiration."

"It seems to me that the floodtide of cynicism which has swamped North America was barely a trickle during my childhood. Perhaps it always seems so, to each generation; there seems to be a general societal agreement that it is well to shield children from our own cynicism until they are old enough to get drunk."

"I have killed the deer;
I have crushed the grasshopper.
I have cut the hearts out of trees growing old.
In my life, I needed death to live. ...
When I die, my body returns to the earth
   :to feed the grass and nourish new life. ...
In this way, the Circle of Life is never broken."

"The morning my grandmother did not awaken, Lucille and I found her crouched on her side with her feet braced against a rumple of bedclothes, her arms flung up, her pigtail trailing across the pillows. It was as if, drowning in air, she had leaped toward ether. What glee there must have been among the few officials who lingered, what a tossing of crepe-banded hats, what a hearty clapping of gloved hands, when my grandmother burst through the spume, so very long after the clouds had closed over the disaster, so long after all hope of rescue had been forgotten. And how they must have rushed to wrap their coats around her, and perhaps embrace her, all of them no doubt flushed with a sense of the considerable significance of the occasion. And my grandmother would scan the shores to see how nearly the state of grace resembled the state of Idaho, and to search the growing crowds for familiar faces."

"A person has very strange thoughts when it seems that life is about to end."

"Pray for the repose of his soul. He was so tired."

"Rascals! Would you live forever?"

"Funerals are not funny, which is why we don't laugh during them unless we just can't help ourselves."

"You don't want to turn a funeral situation into an unhappy event."

"The delusion of mankind,
How long have been its days!"

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"

"We're warped by fantasy, woofed by desire."

"The way that can be walked is not the eternal way;
The names that can be named are not the eternal Name."

"I am technically an Anglican Catholic, meaning that I have a real feel for theological dottiness untainted by deeper questions of religious belief. I have no religious beliefs to speak of, but I stand four-square with the Highs against the Lows on Latin and incense, and I will go to bat for transubstantiation even though it means nothing to me one way or another."

"They will smother me beneath six hundred dogmas; they will call me heretic and they are nevertheless Folly's servants."

"Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one creed, for, he says, 'Wheresoever ye turn there is the face of al-Lah' (Koran 2:109). Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently he blames the beliefs of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance."

"If Bonnie Prince Charlie was in the habit of drinking Drambuie freely he was in no state to lead armies, though it is obvious why he so grossly overestimated the size of his forces. That look of being delightfully fried which he wears in all his portraits is explained, too."

"I figure you only go around once in life, so you might as well go around smashed."

"The first thing he beheld upon arrival was George Cyril Wellbeloved propped up against a tree, obviously in the grip of one of those hangovers that mark epochs, the sort of hangover you tell your grandchildren about when they come clustering round your knee. He looked like the things you find in dust-bins, which are passed over with a disdainful jerk of the head by the discriminating alley cat."

"i heard a dry telling a flapper
the other day that since repeal
the women are drinking
too much gin
and the young lady
thoughtfully replied o nerts
there aint too much gin
there aint hardly enough"

"There's nothing wrong with alcohol, provided you don't put your head in it."

"Drinking games are the lowest form of social interaction outside of a wedding reception."

"I drink to make other people seem interesting."

"I never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast."

"I certainly do not drink all the time. I have to sleep, you know."

"I presunted myself at Betty's bedside late at nite, with considerbul licker koncealed about my persun."

"I like David Crosby's music, but how do you respect anybody who does cocaine and is fat?"

"Rabelais was gloriously learned because learning amused him, and so far as I am concerned that is learning's best justification. Not the only one, but the best."

"The biggest hindrance to learning is fear of showing oneself a fool."

"It is not my intention to denounce modern education. If it is bad, it may be said that all education is bad which is not self-eduction, and quite a lot of self-education is going on today -- some of it in our schools, under the very noses of the teachers!"

"Sir William had stoutly opposed general literacy, believing that when the underclasses learned to read only trouble ensued."

"A certain percentage of children have the habit of thinking; one of the aims of education is to cure them of this habit."

"Taxpayers think that since they pay the salaries of university teachers they have a right to decide what these men shall teach. This principle, if logically carried out, would mean that all the advantages of superior education enjoyed by university professors are to be nullified, and that their teaching is to be the same as if they had no special competence."

"She was a heartless female monster, as bad as her father only worse. Oh, the troubles we had with that unwomanly and avaricious creature."

"We have no amusements in England but vice and religion."

"Thank God, the bridge has broken down which has so long separated the English and the Irish people."

"In all fairness to her, she probably did the best she could, according to her lights. It was just tragic that her light was so poor."

"It is the criterion of all Buddhist teaching that it conduces or does not conduce to the achievement of enlightenment."

"The apostate must work out his own damnation."

"I couldn't bear to think of you having to go through all that dieting and exercising, because I do think it is so dangerous for a man of your age. A man of your age needs plenty of nourishing food, and there is always the risk of straining yourself seriously. A distant connexion of ours, one of the Hampshire Wilberforces, started touching his toes before breakfast, and he had some sort of a fit. ... Rupert Wilberforce it was -- a sort of second cousin I suppose you would have called him -- he married one of the Devonshire Fairbairns. He was a man getting on in years -- about your age -- and when he found he was putting on weight, he allowed himself to be persuaded by a thoughtless friend to touch his toes fifty times before breakfast every morning. And on the third morning he did not come down to breakfast, and they went up to his room, and there he was writhing on the floor in dreadful agonies. His heart had run into his liver."

"Every unsuccessful attempt to win fame brought me nearer to the time when triumph would be useless even if it came."

"If she had as much talent as temper, she would be famous now."

"Celebrity was a long time in coming; it will go away. Everything goes away."

"I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more."

"The family as an institution embodies jealousy and parental feeling."

"We have a great tradition in my family: we get together and psychologically abuse each other until one of us has a seizure. Then we have pie."

   "Instead of clearing his own heart the zealot tries to clear the world. The laws of the City of God are applied only to his in-group (tribe, church, nation, class, or what-not) while the fire of a perpetual holy war is hurled (with good conscience, and indeed a sense of pious service) against whatever uncircumcised, barbarian, heathen,'native,' or alien people happens to occupy the position of neighbor.
   "The world is full of the resultant mutually contradicting bands: totem-, flag-, and party-worshipers."