I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.
He had in his Bronx apartment a lodger less learned than himself, and much fiercer in piety. One day when we were studying the laws of repentance together, the lodger burst from his room. What! he sai...
The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and...
Life is a dream, a little more coherent than most.
He’s too clever to be wise, if that makes any sense. Very
Conformity is evil when it distorts, flattens, and erases fruitful ways, strong ideas, natural identities; it is evil when it is a steamroller. But a man cannot escape being part of a milieu--and a re...
Cabs, cabs! Why did God give you feet? Walk me to Fiftieth.
About the nicest thing God ever invented was alcohol. He's proud of it, too. The Bible's full of kind remarks about booze.
Sir, my inferior understanding prevents my grasping the unquestionable soundness of the mission.
Judaism takes the verse in Genesis, 'Be fruitful and multiply,' as part of its statutory law. Because it is the first law in the Torah it holds a special eminence.
Can’t stop a Nazi with a lawbook.
With the smoke of the dead sailor's cigar wreathing around him, Willie passed to thinking about death and life and luck and God. Philosophers are at home with such thoughts, perhaps, but for other peo...
There are good and bad things in all political systems.
The only true non-conformists are in the asylums; the only radically free spirits are in the death house awaiting the chair. We live by patterns.
In the glare, the great and terrible light of this happening, God seems to signal that the story of the rest of us need not end, and that the new light can prove a troubled dawn.For the rest of us, pe...
Dithyramb coming to majestic life: a swarm of fresh seapower
The girl you marry and the woman you must make a life with are two different people.
She had learned from her encounter with Mike Eden that there really was more than one man in the world-the piece of knowledge that more than anything else divides women from girls.
You can’t understand command till you’ve had it. It’s the loneliest, most oppressive job in the whole world. It’s a nightmare, unless you’re an ox. You’re forever teetering along a tiny path of correc...
There are no difficulties that can’t be overcome,