By fools, knaves fatten; by bigots, priests are well clothed; every knave finds a gull.

There are few mortals so insensible that their affections cannot he gained by mildness, their confidence by sincerity, their hatred by scorn or neglect

In fame's temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race.

Who conquers indolence conquers all other hereditary sins.

Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.

The quarter of an hour before dinner is the worst that suitors can choose.

The more you speak of yourself, the more you are likely to lie.

Idlers cannot even find time to be idle, or the industrious to be at leisure. We must always be doing or suffering

A moral lesson is better expressed in short sayings than in long discourse.

Suicides pay the world a bad compliment. Indeed, it may so happen that the world has been beforehand with them in incivility. Granted. Even then the retaliation is at their own expense.

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

It is quite gratifying to feel guilty if you haven't done anything wrong: how noble! Whereas it is rather hard and certainly depressing to admit guilt and to repent.

Whenever the insistence is on the point that God answers prayer we are off the track. The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God not of the answer.

And how can it be he's so in love with me? To grow up without love, and still have so much inside?

I'm a performance artist first; I'm a recording artist second.

The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what we do; and yet how much is not done by us!

There is plenty of ambitious competition and hypocrisy in the middle class, which makes it a rather fertile environment for a writer.

Don't hope more than you're willing to work.

It is useless to put news agency stories behind the paid curtain because they are available in thousands of other places that will be free.

I feel like we are at a time of great creativity if we choose to embrace it as such, if we choose to engage the will of our imaginations and imagine another way of being in the world.

To be engaged in opposing wrong affords...but a slender guarantee for being right.