“When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.”

The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant they are.

A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.

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.

No honest man will argue on every side.

The truth is always the strongest argument.

Sugar is responsible for a lot of deaths. Arguably more than crack cocaine.

The people of Nebraska are for free silver and I am for free silver. I will look up the arguments later.

I have just as many liberal ideas as I have conservative ideas that I argue with myself sometimes.

An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature.

Whenever one refuses to admit such a self-evident truth, for instance, as that it is wrong to steal, don’t argue with him-search him; the reason may be found in his pocket.

At a certain age I just stopped arguing. I realized that there was no way [my father] could see, because for him to approve of what I was doing, he would have to have some belief in me as a musician.