“The great charm in argument is really finding one’s own opinions, not other people’s.”

We possess nothing certainly except the past.

I put the words down and push them a bit.

It is easy, retrospectively, to endow one’s youth with a false precocity or a false innocence; to tamper with the dates marking one’s stature on the edge of the door.

If politicians and scientists were lazier, how much happier we should all be.

Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.

A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions , but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.

There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.

Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

Don’t hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.

To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.

Free speech gives us the ability to react vigorously with effective arguments and expose the weakness and misdirection of the other side’s claims.

Bigot – A person who wins an argument with a liberal.

I shall not make an argument ad hominem. My argument is ad bullshitem.

It’s better not to argue with women.

The written argument endures. The oral argument is fleeting.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument.

Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments