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

REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm.

MYTHOLOGY, n. The body of a primitive people’s beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.

Mausoleum, n: the final and funniest folly of the rich.

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

Laughter, n. An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable.

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.

Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

Riot – A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.

IMAGINATION, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.

If you sing of beauty though alone in the heart of the desert you will have an audience.

You can be gorgeous at thirty, charmimg at forty, and irresistible for the rest of your life.

God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

The truth is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself.

Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.

Everyone smiles in the same language.

There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.