“Do we ever get what we really want? Do we ever achieve what our powers have ostensibly equipped us for? No: everything works by contraries.”

I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That’s a totally different matter.

Countless are, as the sand in the sea, the deep desires of men, and none resembles the other, and all of them, whether shameful, or great, in the beginning are obedient, but later become terrible masters over him.

Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.

The more debris there is the more it will show the governor’s activity.

A time of famine and poverty will come and the people as a whole as well as every individual in it will suffer.

Sank into the profound slumber which comes only to such fortunate folk as are troubled neither with mosquitoes nor fleas nor excessive activity of brain.

Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young.

There are occasions when a woman, no matter how weak and impotent in character she may be in comparison with a man, will yet suddenly become not only harder than any man, but even harder than anything and everything in the world.

It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.

The Lord grant we may all be tillers of the soil.

Whatever you may say, the body depends on the soul.

I am who I am and that’s who I am.

I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.

It’s the most righteous, which of course is not the same thing as the most profitable.

The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.

What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself.

There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three.

Democracy is a hegemonic tool of the West and contrary to Islam. Why do you act as though the entire world needs democracy? And when it comes to homosexuality, the issue is clearly dealt with by the Koran. It says it is forbidden and should be punished.

If religious beliefs and opinions are found contrary to the standards of science they are mere superstitions and imaginations.

Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary.

Nothing occurs contrary to nature except the impossible, and that never occurs.

When gods are contrary they stand by no one.

See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.

Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.