“I have the fault of being a little more sincere than is proper.”

All is wholesome in the absence of excess.

Reason is not what decides love.

Consistency is only suitable for ridicule.

Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive.

One can be well-bred and write bad poetry.

Heaven forbids, it is true, certain gratifications, but there are ways and means of compounding such matters.

In order to prove a friend to one’s guests, frugality must reign in one’s meals; and, according to an ancient saying, one must eat to live, not live to eat.

It is madness beyond compare To try to reform the world.

The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?

The maturing process of becoming a writer is akin to that of a harlot. First you do it for love, then for a few friends, and finally only for money.

It is a strange enterprise to make respectable people laugh.

The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.

Gold makes the ugly beautiful.

People are all alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.

The genuine Amphitryon is the Amphitryon with whom we dine.

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

The government must give proper weight to both keeping America safe from terrorists and protecting Americans’ privacy.

Proper effort is not the effort to make something particular happen. It is the effort to be aware and awake each moment, the effort to overcome laziness and merit, the effort to make each activity of our day meditation.

Living longer is about loving longer, learning longer, teaching longer, connecting longer.

They lack any ability to sense what is beautiful or what is proper. They can be learned and skillful, but they lack the ability to make their own free judgment. It is really sad to see young adults of 20, 25 years who were never taught to make their own decisions.

Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. … under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.

A proper home can provide the bridge across that terrible gulf between poverty and a better future.

A Literary Society is the most proper form for the introduction of our Order into any state where we are yet strangers.

I started rejecting the proper way to sing and I started singing.