“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.

Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh, for the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

To accuse another of having weak kidneys, lungs, or heart, is not a crime; on the contrary, saying he has a weak brain is a crime.

See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.

The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn’t happened.

But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.