That strange blend of the commercial traveller the missionary and the barbarian conqueror which was the American abroad.

The universe now appeared to me as a void wherein floated rare flakes of snow, each flake a universe.

We have no government and no laws, if by law is meant a stereotyped convention supported by force, and not to be altered without the aid of cumbersome machinery.

A nation . . . is just a society for hating foreigners.

Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, there'll still be time. Oh, God, what for?

The expansion of the whole cosmos was but the shrinkage of all its physical units and of the wavelengths of light.

In you, humanity is precarious; and so, in dread and in shame, you kill the animal in you. And its slaughter poisons you.

No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet, could have guessed that this bland orb [Earth] teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.

The creator, if he should love his creature, would be loving only a part of himself; but the creature, praising the creator, praises an infinity beyond himself.

In fact man's career has been less like a mountain torrent hurtling from rock to rock, than a great sluggish river, broken very seldom by rapids.

It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit... We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be.

If the intent is right, why waste time thinking about the consequences.

You begin with other people's stories and end up with your own.

Once, she fell off of a ladder when I was three. She says all she was worried about was my face as I watched her fall.

To know and not do, is to not yet know.

If you end up getting into a fight with someone, make sure that you win by at least half a mile.

One of the Seven [wise men of Greece] was wont to say: That laws were like cobwebs, where the small flies are caught and the great break through.

I try hard and aim big. People can hate or love my books but they can never accuse me of not trying.

The world is on a bumpy journey to a new destination and the New Normal.

When you do not accept the insult some one casts on you, it goes back to the person who indulged in it first; a registered letter that is not accepted returns to the sender.

I'm like toilet paper, toothpaste and certain amenities - I'm proven to be good. I've still got 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years left.