“If you desire praise or esteem, endeavor to merit it.”

It is often better to be restricted to necessity than unconfined in the measure of our desires: prosperity destroys more individuals than adversity ruins.

Most men will go farther to give advice than to follow their own opinion.

Liberty, like health, appears most precious when lost.

Scientists believe they may have discovered a primitive form of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa. That primitive form of life? You guessed it, Frank Stallone.

I generally have a real strong idea or a strong punchline, and I just try to get to it by rambling around, as I don’t like to memorize words.

The standard of morals is as variable as morals themselves; of which every nation has a different code, and every custom a different reading.

Few people love with the violence they hate.

This would have been a great game to watch if we didn’t have any money on it.

There are two indiscretions that generally distinguish fools: a readiness to report whatever they hear, and a practice of communicating with secrecy what is commonly understood.

You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him.

I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punch line were identical.

When I hear a guy lost a battle to cancer, that really did bother me, that that’s a term. It implies that he failed and that somebody else that defeated cancer is heroic and courageous.

When people told the audience that [Sam Kinison] was good, he was accepted after that.

There are two things at which most men are grieved: when their faults are exposed, and when their virtues are concealed.

Back in the old days, a man could just get sick and die. Now they have to wage a battle. So my Uncle Bert is waging a courageous battle, which I’ve seen, because I go and visit him. And this is the battle: he’s lying in the hospital bed, with a thing in his arm, watching Matlock on the TV.

The young compliment their greatness on the number of their friends; the old, on the confidence of them.

Since my return to America my Master, has at the desire of my friends in England given me my freedom.

The desire to please those we admire and respect often cripples conscience.

The universe is ours to expand. No more living in the shadows of our potential and the things we desire.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Hatred grows into insolence when we desire to excel the rest of mankind and imagine we do not belong to the common lot; we even severely and haughtily despise others as our inferiors.

My father was against the death penalty, and that was hard in the Son of Sam summer when fear was driving the desire for the death penalty.

Don’t let your fears overwhelm your desire. Let the barriers you face-and there will be barriers-be external, not internal. Fortune does favor the bold, and I promise that you will never know what you’re capable of unless you try.

Every lake belongs to the quietness desired by the swans.