A friend who offers help without asking for explanations is a treasure beyond price.
[He] stopped long enough to remind himself that this baby innocent was neither babyish nor innocent — was in fact sophisticated in a culture which he was beginning to realize, however dimly, was far i...
Yes, Boss?'Dorcas, the last twenty or thirty years I've been a worthless, no-good parasite.'She yawned again. 'Everybody knows that.'Nevermind the flattery. There comes a time in every man's life when...
Two bodies attract each other directly as the product of their masses and inversely as the square of their distance.' It sounds like a rule for simple physical facts, does it not? Yet it is nothing of...
This very personal relationship, ‘value,’ has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him . . . and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is a...
Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.
There’s precious little choice. There’s always a choice! This one is a choice between ‘bad’ and ‘worse—’which is a difference much more poignant than that between ‘good’ and ‘better.
There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured.
There is an old song which asserts that ‘the best things in life are free.’ Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the t...
There comes a time in the life of every human when he or she must decide to risk his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor on an outcome dubious. Those who fail the challenge are merely overgrown ch...
The way to live a long time—oh, a thousand years or more—is something between the way a child does it and the way a mature man does it. Give the future enough thought to be ready for it—but don’t worr...
The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war’s desolation.
The moment I put it on, that suit became an old, familiar, and valued friend—and I became taller and wider across the shoulders. It could not have fit better if it had been made on my body. It knew th...
The junior hoodlums who roamed their streets were symptoms of a greater sickness; their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of ‘rights’ . . . and lost track of their dutie...
The golden sunshine of Italy congealed into tears. Here's to alcoholic brotherhood ... much more suited to the frail human soul, if any, than any other sort.
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that states: Of course it is none of my business, but -- is to place a period after the word but.
The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.
The capacity of humans to believe in what seems to me highly improbable- from table tapping to the superiority of their children- has never been plumbed.
The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable - from table tapping to the superiority of their own children - has never been plumbed. Faith strikes m...
The Japanese have five different ways to say ‘thank you’—and every one of them translates literally as resentment, in various degrees. Would that English had the same built-in honesty on this point! I...