“There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join”

I am eighty years old. There seems to be nothing to add to this statement. I have reached the age of undecorated facts – facts that refuse to be softened by sentiment, or confused by nobility of phrase.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.

For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.

Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.

the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring – or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps – lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.

Humor brings insight and tolerance.

There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.

The essence of humor is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind.

What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out.

It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.

Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.

to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.

Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

On Saturday of MLK weekend, just days before the inauguration, thousands of people joined me in the nation`s capital to protect the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Those allies who failed to join us will regret it. They’re making a mistake.

In my family, there were Kei and Minoru and then there were the rest. Everyone in my family is very opinionated and everyone tried to join the debate. But by the time my turn came, there was nothing left to say.

I did join the Revolutionary Guard, but I was simply a simple Revolutionary Guard, never a commander.

The bottom line for Republicans is this: The United States can have an open door without having open borders, but we cannot preserve the country we love by slamming that door in the faces of those who most aspire to join our nation.

Many Sunnis joined Islamic State because they felt they were being treated poorly.

Law and equity are two things which God has joined, but which man has put asunder.

To exclude anything that appears in your universe is not love. Love joins with everything. It doesn’t exclude the monster. It doesn’t avoid the nightmare – it looks forward to it.