“Optimist – A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.”

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.

Optimism – the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.

He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity.

Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener.

April fool, n. The March fool with another month added to his folly.

Wine, madam, is God’s next best gift to man.

MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.

He who thinks with difficulty believes with alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but he must be caught young, for his convictions, unlike those of the wise, harden with age.

Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know.

Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.

Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

Democracy is defended in 3 stages. Ballot Box, Jury Box, Cartridge Box.

In the gates of eternity the black hand and the white hand hold each other with equal clasp.

I saw for the first time the earth’s shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. The feelings which filled me I can express with one word-joy.

We ought even to hold as a fixed principle that what I see white I believe to be black, if the superior authorities define it to be so.

We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierarchy of the Church so decides.

If you have the power to see things through somebody else’s eyes, it’s like going from black and white to color or two dimensions to three dimensions.

It could have been worse. I could have been born black.

I am a Negro: Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.

When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.