A cripple in the right way may beat a racer in the wrong one. Nay, the fleeter and better the racer is, who hath once missed his way, the farther he leaveth it behind.

In spite of their hats being very ugly, Goddam! I love the English.

Is suffering so very serious? I have come to doubt it. It may be quite childish, a sort of undignified pastime -- I'm referring to the kind of suffering a man inflicts on a woman or a woman on a man. It's extremely painful. I agree that it's hardly bearable. But I very much fear that this sort of pain deserves no consideration at all. It's no more worthy of respect than old age or illness.

I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.

Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.

Every sin is the result of a collaboration.

The difficult we do immediately; the impossible takes a little longer.

What is my loftiest ambition? I've always wanted to throw an egg at an electric fan.

Neither art thou the man to catch the fiend and hold him!

I submit all my plays to the National Theatre for rejection. To assure myself I am seeing clearly.

When individuals approach one another with deep purposes on both sides they seldom come at once to the matter which they have most at heart. They dread the electric shock of a too sudden contact with it.

The wicked are always surprised to find ability in the good.

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon and does not hear her.

Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans. Aim high in hope and work. Remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.

The Old Man and Death An old man was employed in cutting wood in the forest, and, in carrying the faggots to the city for sale one day, became very wearied with his long journey. He sat down by the wayside, and throwing down his load, besought Death to come. Death immediately appeared in answer to his summons and asked for what reason he had called him. The Old Man hurriedly replied, That, lifting up the load, you may place it again upon my shoulders.

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

Love truth, but pardon error.

Though all afflictions are evils in themselves, yet they are good for us, because they discover to us our disease and tend to our cure.

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.