“The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to.”

Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.

When all is said and done, no literature can outdo the cynicism of real life; you won’t intoxicate with one glass someone who has already drunk up a whole barrel.

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

When a person expends the least amount of motion on one action, that is grace.

The problem is that we attempt to solve the simplest questions cleverly, thereby rendering them unusually complex. One should seekthe simple solution.

What seems to us serious, significant and important will, in future times, be forgotten or won’t seem important at all.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

Just as I shall lie alone in the grave, so, in essence, do I live alone.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

When asked, “Why do you always wear black?”, he said, “I am mourning for my life.

Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.

Not one of our mortal gauges is suitable for evaluating non-existence, for making judgments about that which is not a person.

You will not become a saint through other people’s sins.

Oh, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read – my own or other people’s works – it all seems to me not short enough.

The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.

He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

I get diminishing returns when I bore myself in an interview.

When I was done traveling, I returned convinced of one thing: we’re nothing.

I would not then come to Governor Harrison to ask him to tear up the treaty, and to obliterate the landmark, but I would say to him, “Sir, you have the liberty to return to your own country.”

The man who is cocksure that he has arrived is ready for the return journey.

I think Batman Returns is right for riffs. I love it but it’s the ultimate Tim Burton movie. There is so much that happens that’s crazy and there are a ton of things to riff.

People of the Philippines: I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil-soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples.

Leaving behind the false, return to the true: make no discriminations between self and others. In contemplation, one’s mind should be stable and unmoving, like a wall.

I came out of Bataan and I shall return!