A Snake in the Grass
"I have come to believe that in many, perhaps most, cases it is the presence of a human being, and his attitude, that makes the difference between excrement and a rose. I have seen many acres of rosebushes on which the roses were so thick and heavy that the branches could not take their share of the sun; when the bushes were surrounded by a trench with sides that had been faced with stones so that not one drop of rain could pass, the roses gave out no sweet perfume but only a sickly, sour smell; yet when a child had been placed before these bushes with a child's toy in his hands, the roses were covered with a white blossom so fragrant that it came and was wafted away on the very breath of those who passed."
The Auspicious Deed
"To be ignorant of what happened before one was born is to be ever a child. For what happened before one was born one has only to be told, as if one heard it of yesterday. For the past is the present that has already happened. And the future, too, is still in the future. Man has only to be taught the ABC of what happened before one was born."
The Tightwad Tells it Like it is
"Anger, especially when felt as an offence to one's own dignity, or to one's social status, has an obvious tendency to bring on the illness which psychiatrists call 'dementia,' and which the rest of us call old age. It is no use trying to talk sense to an angry man. You may be talking sense, but he is going to ignore what you are saying and go off on a frothing tirade about what you have said that he can't possibly have heard."
On Telling People How to Live Their Lives
"O that in one small country of the earth God would make one man of such wisdom and in a little country of that man as many as one would wish to live. And that God would have to create but one man to make such a great people that He would become exasperated and give no rest to His soul but would say unto Him, 'O that my soul could be with one of my sheep like this.'"
On People who Want to be Famous
"I take it as a personal affront when my neighbor asks for my advice."
Bullshit Is a Stolen Good
"The one who has never failed to take the bait will never be eaten by the catfish. But you can fail to notice the line, and then you are dinner."
On Life
"My grandfather used to say, 'We don't live forever. If we did we could do whatever we pleased.' I've come to believe that he was right. And I've come to believe in eternity."
For Us, For Our Children and Grandchildren's Children
"I think we all have our own versions of heaven, our version of utopia, and we spend our lives reaching for it. Some of us succeed, some of us fail, and some of us, the ones who never get off the ground, simply give up. But once you get on the ground it's okay. Your plane's been flying alright."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"The truth is like poetry, and most people would rather lie than read it."
On Life
"The important thing is to learn the art of saying No. An unanswerable man is as wonderful as an unanswerable question."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."
On Life
"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"Some people make the mistake of thinking that knowledge is power. It is not. It is only an illusion that more information will give you mastery over your life."
On Life
"It is a dangerous thing to live your life according to others' expectations."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"One of the saddest things I have ever read was a book that described with loving eloquence every rock formation in the state of Virginia. I think perhaps the saddest thing is the description of the one rock which is in precisely the right position to give the illusion that it is the only one. And all around it are groups of rocks each in its place and each giving the impression that it is the only one. But a man, or an appreciation of rocks, does not live for rocks alone. What it must feel like to be the last man on earth and to find that there is no one left who will share a beer with you. It is not always possible to choose one's company."
On Life
"Man has devised so many means of torture that it would be almost an anticlimax to the torturer if his victim did not die of fright before reaching him."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"The person who is not moved by the suffering of another cannot see much of the world for he is looking at the surface of things and not their depth."
On Life
"The difference between a man who is drunk and one who is drunk on power is that while the first may end up vomiting in a gutter, the second can be your minister or your President. One must know both the depths of suffering and the heights of power. No one who cannot suffer his woes will know the height of joy."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"I don't believe in hell and damnation and God knows that's kept me out of a lot of trouble. I have yet to meet the God who would cast my innocent baby in a fire if I was a transgressor of one of his 613 commandments. I do not want his love. All I want from him is a little common decency. I am not as proud as Lucifer but at least he was faithful to God and stood up for what he believed in, unlike so many other 'heavenly beings.' But the God of the Old Testament doesn't speak to me, so perhaps he would be the right God for me to love. However, when it comes to my eternal fate, I can guarantee you that there will be no God. The idea that there is a God who will torture or reward me for fifty or seventy or eighty years or more is as unbelievable as the idea that he will help me get a job. We live in an upside-down world."
On Life
"I believe in the eternal verity that there is good in all men; that in the core of every man there lies a spark of something that resembles the Divine, and that this spark enkindles his heart with the capacity for compassion, the recognition of his own fallibility and the desire to achieve whatever it is he feels is the best in himself. If there is a God, it's very much like this."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"I have never yet felt the least need for any spiritual laws which I had not already obeyed, for however much I may feel I may need laws to help me to be good, if I were not good, a law that would help me to be bad would be no use to me. That which I could not obey without breaking them would not be worth the paper they were written on. But it was the desire for liberty that drew me to religion. I believe in liberty with a passion. I have never found a rule I could not bend; a law I could not evade. I am as passionate as anyone else in my belief that every man should be free to say what he believes, to worship whom he wishes, to live how he wishes; but I have never seen any reason why he should be free to do what is wrong."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"I believe in God. I believe in the dignity and self-sufficiency of the individual and his right to decide how his life is going to be lived and what principles he is going to live by, which must be his own. I do not believe that the individual should have a master; that he has been born into a prison of any kind. Neither do I believe that he has been born into a prison of any kind in which to be a free man means that his life must be one of compromise and submission. I believe in God because I believe in my own integrity, because I believe in the dignity of the individual. When you understand this, I think you will know what I mean when I speak of the dignity of the individual."
On Life
"The one thing we all love and enjoy without exception is to be free from obligation to others, the one thing we never tolerate is to be obligated to others."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"To deny the supremacy of human reason is to support that most insidious and corrupt form of tyranny, indifference to reason."
On Life
"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
On the Art of Telling People Things They Might Like to Know
"Now if a man loves his wife, he has every reason to
