“Believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail.”

A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.

Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.

Writing a first draft is like trying to build a house in a strong wind.

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the base of our splendid failure to do the impossible.

No matter how young you are or how old you have got. Not for kudos and not for cash: your picture in the paper nor money in the back either. Just refuse to bear them.

They say that it is the practiced liar who can deceive. But so often the practiced and chronic liar deceives only himself; it is the man who all his life has been selfconvicted of veracity whose lies find quickest credence.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed.

A man. All men. He will pass up a hundred chances to do good for one chance to meddle where meddling is not wanted. He will overlook and fail to see chances, opportunities, for riches and fame and welldoing, and even sometimes for evil. But he won’t fail to see a chance to meddle.

There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty; then he’s a damn fool if he doesn’t.

It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.

If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.

So, never be afraid. Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed.

The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.

The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

If there is a God what the hell is He for?

Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

Advertising is not merely an assembly of competing messages; it is a language itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal

In societies where men are truly confident of their own worth women are not merely “tolerated”, they are valued.

There are successful scholars, public-spirited scholars, upright scholars, cautious scholars, and those who are merely petty men.

Flesh is merely a lesson. We learn it & pass on.

There is more to fearlessness than merely having overcome fear… This state of being is not dependent on any external circumstances. It is individual dignity… that comes from being what we are, right now.

Be not merely a man of letters! Let literature be an honorable augmentations to your arms, not constitute the coat or fill the escutcheon!

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.