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Wit for Wisdom
Compiled and Continued by Kevin Solway
- Contents -
| Foreword Introduction Men and Women Some words of my own on Men and Women Love Some words of my own on Love Assorted Jewels Some Gems of my Own A final word |
Foreword
This book is a compilation of words that I like, used in whichever way I see fit to convey
my message. This is what books are for, or at least should be. I have chosen not to attribute the quotes to their
supposed creators. Who knows who created them? And who cares! In any case, I do not claim to have created them
myself, be they ever so deeply embedded in my heart. Even my own productions I submit with the knowledge that they
can't be mine.
To benefit from this book you must accept what you read as it stands, irregardless of the context in which the words were first used, and by whom. Imagine I wrote the lot - or perhaps God.
If you are interested in finding out more about my writings I would be glad to hear
from you. I would also be glad to hear from any publishers who would like to make this work more convenient to
read by printing and binding it for me.
Introduction
Wit is rarely conducive to wisdom. It is more often a power-play and a fortification. Wit marries ideas lying wide apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. Like a bright blast of lightning, it flashes, strikes and vanishes in an instant. But only if this flash ignites a fire will there be any lasting good. For such a fire there must be fuel, the fuel of courage, open-mindedness, and yearning for truth. And if there is no fuel, well then, the lightning flash of wit may still fell the odd tree or two, which will, in time, feed a killer fire.
Wit is all too often used in the same way that forest fire-fighters use fire - to prevent or stop a larger blaze. Small truths eat-up the fuel and form a barrier against larger and more dangerous truths. Wit becomes an attempt to beat the Devil, in this case the truth, at his own game.
If you would use reason in such a cowardly fashion then I would ask you to return this book to the shelf, where it might await more kindly eyes. But if you have the hunger of a giant and the heart of a lion, then read on my friend - not only will you become human, but then a god, and perhaps, a saint? For not only must there be intelligence, but courage also - an inhuman courage that seeks to walk alone, with none other than the sun and the moon for company. May wit sustain you till you find your walking legs, cutting the ground from under you.
I have not designed this collection of writings for the use of public speakers, businessmen,
public figures, lecturers, authors, clergymen, teachers and students. Quotes are not to be quoted. I work only
for thinkers!
Men and Women
It takes a man a lifetime to find out about one particular woman; but if he puts in, say ten years, industrious and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments of the sex.
Men and women are two different species, descended from different animals.
The battle of the sexes is the most terrible: it is not easy to fight an enemy who has an outpost in your head.
Woman wishes to wish away the differences between the sexes. - but then, that is the nature of woman.
There's no social differences - till women come in.
Girls we love for what they are: Young men for what they promise to be.
Man is not merely the sum of his masks. - Camille Paglia
Words are women, deeds are men.
Women are adorable and men are admirable.
Mankind, woman unkind.
By "woman" is meant sensuality itself, which is well signified by woman, since in woman this naturally prevails.
Beauty in women and distinction in men are alike in this; they seem to the unthinking a kind of credibility.
Fathers compete with their sons, but mothers devour their daughters.
Some men are different. All women are alike.
Men are not troubled to hear a man dispraised, because they know, though he be naught, there's worth in others; but women are mightily troubled to hear any of them spoken against, as if the sex itself were guilty of some unworthiness.
Women take exception to the view that all women are alike, but will vigorously deny that any woman is different.
The sexes deceive themselves about one another: the reason being that fundamentally they love and honour only themselves (or their own ideal, to express it more pleasantly-). Thus man wants woman to be peaceful - but woman is essentially unpeaceful, like a cat, however well she may have trained herself to present an appearance of peace.
For story and experience tell us, That man grows old and women jealous; Both would their little ends secure: He sighs for freedom, she for power. His wishes tend abroad to roam. And hers, to domineer at home.
Men, some to business, some to pleasure take; But every woman is at heart a rake.
The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.
There are only two kinds of men - the dead and the deadly.
Don't accept rides from strange men and remember that all men are as strange as hell.
She is like a stone on the hilltop, difficult to be moved. Yet when she is once started she goeth fast and far; no man knoweth her end. She believeth that ALL men are vain and easy to be flattered. Her heart is older than her head; yea, her emotion is the mother of her reason. She desireth many things, and she is happy till she getteth them. TWO things she holdeth dear, mystery and mastery.
A woman liveth in a romantic FUTURE, yea, one which cometh not. Her heart consenteth before her lips say: YEA; and in this interval lieth her Paradise; wherefore she would prolong it.
Men live by forgetting - women live on memories.
Every man is bound to leave a story better than he found it.
It is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization.
- Charles Darwin
The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain - whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. - Charles Darwin
A woman cannot grasp that one must act from principle; as she has no continuity she does not experience the necessity for logical support of her mental processes . . . she may be regarded as "logically insane".
In general, it can be said that feminine mentality manifests an undeveloped, childlike, or primitive character; instead of the thirst for knowledge, curiosity; instead of judgement, prejudice; instead of thinking, imagination or dreaming; instead of will, wishing. Emma Jung, "On the Nature of the Animus"
Intellectually, a certain inferiority of the female sex can hardly be denied. . . . Women are intellectually more desultory and volatile than men; they are more occupied with particular instances than with general principles; they judge rather by intuitive perceptions than by deliberate reasoning.
Women will avoid the wicked not because it is unright, but only because it is ugly . . . Nothing of duty, nothing of compulsion, nothing of obligation! . . . They do something only because it pleases them . . . I hardly believe that the fair sex is capable of principles. Immanuel Kant
There are only three things in the world that women do not understand; and they are Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
Don't you think that robbing a corpse is indicative of a mean, petty and womanish spirit? Socrates
Offend her, and she knows not to forgive Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live.
To men belong law, justice, science, and philosophy, all that is universal and rational. Women, on the other hand, introduce into everything favour, exception, and personal prejudice.
Women are certainly capable of learning, but they are not made for the higher forms of science, such as philosophy and certain types of artistic creativity; these require a universal ingredient. Women may hit on good ideas and they may, of course, have taste and elegance, but they lack the talent for the ideal.
- Hegel
Surface is woman's nature, foam tossed to and fro on shallow water. But deep is man's nature; his current flows in sub- terranean caverns: woman senses his power, but understands it not.
No lady was ever a gentleman.
For even to vice They are not constant, but are changing still One vice, but of a minute old, for one Not half so old as that.
Man is constant in his infidelity and woman puts him to shame because she is, by nature, fickle.
Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine.
Whoever called women the fair sex didn't know anything about justice.
Man is the will, and woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, will is the rudder, and sentiment the sail; when woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail.
Where woman reigns war rages.
This record will forever stand, "Woman, thy vows are traced in sand."
Woman's love is writ in water, Woman's faith is traced in sand.
Woman, the creature of an hour.
Men's vows are women's traitors.
I change, and so do women too; But I reflect, which women never do.
Do not trust the winter sun or a woman's heart.
Women have one man in their heart, another in their words, and still another in their arms.
The girl who thinks she has broken her heart has only sprained her imagination.
There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.
Women see through each other, but never look into themselves.
The bosom is the central organ of all female ideas, wishes, and moods.
Woman's dearest delight is to wound man's self-conceit, though man's dearest delight is to gratify hers. There is at least one creature lower than man.
We are programmed (by biology or conditioning - who cares which?) to respond to social signals and pressures, and so find it almost impossible to be as single-mindedly ruthless as men.
Everyone has talent. What is rare is courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
A very little wit is valued in woman, as we are pleased with a few words spoken by a parrot.
A man gets what he wants by acting smart; a woman, by playing dumb.
Why is it we never hear of a self-made woman?
Woman submits to her fate; man makes his.
A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self-indulgence.
A clever woman has flashed her glance into the innermost crannies of a man's mind, while he is asking himself the colour of her eyes.
Women are demons who make men enter hell through the gates of paradise.
A beautiful woman is paradise for they eyes, hell for the soul, and purgatory for the purse.
The man who enters his wife's dressing-room is either a philosopher or a fool.
Woman is at once apple and serpent.
Woman is a temple built upon a sewer.
Woman: a promise that cannot be kept.
Women are sweetly smiling angels with pensive looks, innocent faces, and cash-boxes for hearts.
A woman has the form of an angel, the heart of a serpent and the mind of an ass.
The ingenuity of a guileless woman will undermine nine mountains.
Her dove-like eyes turn'd to coals of fire, Her beautiful nose to a terrible snout, Her hands to paws, with nasty great claws, And her bosom went in and her tail came out.
O the unsounded sea of women's bloods, That when 'tis calmest, is most dangerous! . . . Not Cerberus ever saw the damned nooks Hid with the veils of woman's virtuous looks.
The so-called "lovely woman" is beautified with the face of a noble lion, yet is blemished with the belly of a reeking kid and is beweaponed with the virulent tail of a viper.
A woman is like a glowworm which is bright in the hedge and black in the hand.
Women are glow wormes bright, that soil our soules, and dampe our reasons light.
Women are like Gods. They have a face for their worshippers, and one for their rivals.
Here's to the light that lies in woman's eyes, And lies, and lies, and lies.
God made woman beautiful and foolish; beautiful, that man might love her; and foolish, that she might love him.
God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment - but many other things ceased as well. Woman was God's _second_ mistake.
Woman has never created anything as beautiful as she has destroyed.
Just say "No" when you are dealing with women or any other addictive drug.
Sexually, woman is nature's contrivance for perpetuating its highest achievement. Sexually, man is woman's contrivance for fulfilling nature's behest in the most economical way.
An egotist is a man who expects a woman to marry him for himself alone.
No woman ever found a rich man ugly.
"If this man had not thirty thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow."
I should think myself a very bad woman if I had done what I do, for a farthing less.
Few things are more expensive than a girl who is free in the evening.
So many women . . . so little cash.
If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
Americans worship two gods - dollars and dames - and the dollars are for the dames. The statue of Liberty is a woman.
It is still the case that women believe a caress to be better than a career.
A science career for women is now almost as acceptable as being cheerleader.
When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.
There are two kinds of women: those who wish to marry, and those who haven't the slightest intention not to.
Women like to attend weddings, to hear the big, sweet, juicy promises the bridegroom makes.
To a single woman men are either dates, potential dates, or date substitutes.
There's only one way to get on for a woman, and that's to please men. That is what women think men are for.
Alas for all the women who marry dull men, go into the suburbs, and never come out again.
The only time a woman has a true orgasm is when she's shopping. Every other time she's faking it. It's common courtesy.
A woman's place is in the mall.
O woman, you are not merely the handiwork of God, but also of men; these are ever endowing you with beauty from their own hearts. . . . You are one-half woman and one-half dream.
Half a dozen well-dressed men would be indistinguishably alike if you decapitated them. It is notorious that men are slaves of fashion.
The average man spends 3,350 hours of his life shaving.
That which attracts us in a woman rarely binds us to her.
Women: an infinity of cosmetics.
Cosmetics make women appear not as young as they are painted.
"I did not use paint. I made myself up morally."
Women should be thankful that the laws requiring truth in packaging don't apply to them.
Nowadays, a woman without artificial loveliness doesn't look natural.
Men say knowledge is power; women think dress is power.
Judge a man not by his clothes, but by his wife's clothes.
What does a woman want? Adornments.
Women who are not vain about their clothes are often vain about not being vain about their clothes.
Women are the decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.
Woman's first duty is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered.
Informal's what women always say they're going to be and never are.
If you are looking for trouble, tell a woman her new dress is unbecoming.
Beauty is only sin deep.
Brains are never a handicap to a girl if she hides them under a see-through blouse.
A woman is as young as her knee.
There are few women whose worth lasts longer than their beauty.
Men hunt women for their skins.
The charms of a passing woman are direct relation to the speed of her passing.
A woman's smile may attract a man, but it takes an angelic temper to hold him.
Pretty women and rich men are rarely wrong.
Women are like elephants to me; they're nice to look at, but I wouldn't want to own one.
If a man hears much that a woman says, she is not beautiful.
Most men read too much to be wise, and most women talk too much to be beautiful.
If a man tells a woman she is beautiful, she will overlook most of the other lies he told her.
Tell a woman she's a beauty and the Devil will tell her so ten times.
As a woman's waist increases, her faith in man decreases.
To men a man is but a mind . . . But woman's body is the woman.
Woman strives for loveliness, man for dignity.
Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men.
Many women would swap brains for beauty and think they were getting the best of the bargain.
The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows that the average man can see much better than he can think.
Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style. It will look ridiculous year after year.
Princess Di wears more clothes in one day than Ghandi wore in his whole life.
A woman's appearance depends upon two things: the clothes she wears and the time she gives to her toilet . . . Against the first we bring the charge of ostentation, against the second of harlotry.
Tertulian, Roman theologian
One of the fathers, if I am rightly informed, has defined a woman to be an animal that delights in finery. I have . . . observed, that in all ages they have been more careful than men to adorn that part of the head which we generally call the outside.
Hair is the bane of most women's lives.
Women: long hair and short brains.
A woman is like a salad: much depends on the dressing.
The feminine vanity-case is the grave of masculine illusions.
Most women dress on the theory that a man can't think while he's looking.
"After men, monkeys have the most intelligence," says an author. Others will argue that women do.
Smart men are smarter than they look; smart women look smarter than they are.
The heart is the whole of women, who are guided by nothing else: and it has so much to say, even with men . . . that it triumphs in every struggle with the understanding.
In the interests of equal opportunity, philosophic discussion should be forbidden to cows with lipstick.
A young lady who thinks is like a young man who rouges.
To find fault with a woman's intellect you must first find her intellect.
Woman is unrivaled as a wet nurse.
Man forgives woman everything save the wit to outwit him.
It isn't that gentlemen prefer blondes, it's just that blondes look dumber.
Women have simple tastes. They can get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
The woman and the sage are forever diametrically opposed - each thinks the other lives a life of escapism.
The masculine attitude: "If women were not fools, how would we look?"
Essentially feminine, she was able to chatter but say nothing, ask questions and require no reply.
She affected to establish the character of a woman, thoughtless through wit, indiscreet through simplicity, but religious on principle.
People who give their letters large bodies but little else live for the present. They enjoy gossip and like being socially involved. They are not over interested in making money. Women tend to write like this.
Jane Paterson
"Know Yourself Through
Your Handwriting"
Women can write more interestingly than men on the really important topics of civilization: dress, food and furniture.
No woman ever wrote a really good book. - Lord Melbourne, to Queen Victoria, 1838
She wavers, she hesitates; in a word, she is a woman.
Woman's one notable invention: Perpetual emotion.
She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B.
Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.
Women: picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense.
A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them.
Poor inanimate, unreal dolls, with just enough will of their own to open their eyes and shut them.
Frailty, thy name is woman!
No wonder women live longer than men - look how long they remain girls.
You bring up your girls to be ornaments and then complain of their frivolity.
Women live happier lives than men because there are more things forbidden to them.
When he has a thorn in his side, she has to have a sword through her heart.
Of what use is independence to a woman, if she is - all alone?
God created women because He couldn't teach sheep how to type.
If the parasite woman on the couch, the plaything and amusement of men, be the permanent and final manifestation of female human life on the planet, then that couch is also the death-bed of human evolution.
It takes two to make a woman into a sex object.
Democracy is woman's greatest invention. Indeed, it even reflects her character: purposeless, irrational, subject to public opinion and passing fashions, rambling, confused, underhanded, scheming, in love with its own purity.
To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it and, what is worse, feel happy about it.
Woman: a biped with two hands, two feet, two breasts, two eyes and two faces.
There are only two things I dislike about her - her face.
"She blushed like a well-trained sunrise."
A woman has three reasons for everything she does: the reason she says she has, the reason she thinks she has, and the reason she really has.
Every woman is a committee.
A cat has nine lives and a woman has nine cat's lives.
Was she a great actress? Yes, I think so. Of course women act all the time. It is easier to judge a man.
If a woman meant what she said, she wouldn't say it.
If a woman thinks that a man means nothing to her, he very likely means _everything_.
I will not say that women have no character, rather, they have a new one every day.
A good woman's prejudices are harder to combat than a bad woman's vices.
No matter how worthless a man is, there's always a woman and a dog that love him.
A man of straw is worth a woman of gold.
There are few virtuous women who do not tire of their role.
Virtue in women is often merely love of their reputation and their peace of mind.
A woman without a man is like a garden without a fence.
Lady: one who never shows her underwear unintentionally.
God made many women smart, a few clever; and some good.
There are many good women, but they are all dead.
A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.
If men knew all that women think, they'd be twenty times more daring.
Sexual shyness in a man excites the desire of dissolute women, but arouses contempt in decent ones.
She is chaste whom nobody has asked.
Between a woman's "yes" and "no" there is no room for the point of a needle.
Are there still virgins? One is tempted to answer no. There are only girls who have not yet crossed the line, because they want to preserve their market value . . . Call them virgins if you wish, these travellers in transit.
Most good women are hidden treasures who are only safe because nobody looks for them.
No modern woman with a grain of sense ever sends little notes to an unmarried man - not until she is married, anyway.
"Remember, men, we're fighting for this woman's honour; which is probably more than she ever did."
The sad lesson of life is that you treat a girl with respect, and the next guy comes along and he's banging the hell out of her.
The best couturiers, hairdressers, home designers and cooks are men. I suspect that were it biologically possible men would make better mothers. Ida Alexa Ross Wylie
What they love to yield they would often rather have stolen. Rough seduction delights them; the boldness of near rape is a compliment.
Any woman will marry any man that bothers her enough.
A wise woman never yields by appointment. It should always be an unforeseen happiness.
The difference between rape and seduction is salesmanship.
She is proud of catching male interest, of arousing admiration, but what revolts her is to be caught in return. Men's stares flatter and hurt her simultaneously; she wants only what she shows to be seen: eyes are always too penetrating.
Women sometimes forgive a man who presses an opportunity, but never a man who misses one.
There are women who offer their bodies as though they were bestowing some inestimable gift upon you.
Little girls are won with dolls; big girls with dollars.
Even a fickle woman is loyal to one man - until she prefers another.
Her husband's funeral Is often where a widow looks for the next man.
There is no fury like an ex-wife searching for a new lover.
Woman's virtue is man's greatest invention.
Indiscretion: the guilt of woman.
A woman sometimes feels pity for the sorrows that she causes without remorse.
No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her.
A woman rarely discards one lover until she is sure of another.
What is conscience to a wife? . . . To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel.
The formation of a young lady's mind and character usually consists in telling her lies.
With a man, a lie is a last resort; with women, it's First Aid.
Women are not half as sensitive about their sins as about their follies.
Women always speak the truth, but not the whole truth.
Most women think that truth is an irrelevant triviality whose only role in life is as a stumbling block for men.
A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever.
The one thing that man never gives to a woman is spiritual help.
Women are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit, but for solid, reasoning good sense, I never in my life knew one that had it.
Women get dumber as they grow smarter.
Revenge is always the delight of a little weak and petty mind; of which you may straightway draw proof from this, that no one so rejoices in revenge as a woman.
Revenge is when a woman gets even with a man for what she's done to him.
The one thing that man never gives to a woman is spiritual help.
The souls of women are so small, that some believe they've none at all.
The soul of a woman lives in love.
Where neither love nor hatred is in the game a woman is a mediocre player.
Where love is absent there can be no woman.
Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman?
I've never met a man of good character who has had anything to do with a woman.
Women have no moral sense; they rely for their behaviour upon the men they love.
Women are all bought in the market - from the whore to the Princess. The price alone is different, and the highest price, in money or rank, obtains the woman.
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare, And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.
It has often been claimed that God is a woman, but to my knowledge no-one has ever claimed that the Devil is a woman and really meant it. So I will.
The overwhelming pain of loneliness; a mother smiles at her baby - watch out for the Devil!
Both women and dragons are best out of the world.
Were there no women, men might live like gods.
There's no music when a woman is in the concert.
Dedication in a book: "To my wife, without whose absence this could not have been written."
Nine men out of ten would be quite happy, I believe, if there were no women in the world, once they had grown accustomed to the quiet.
A woman is better lost than found, better forsaken than taken.
It would take some men five years to degrade themselves sufficiently to be able to enjoy the society of women.
Woman cheapens his thoughts. He knows this, but does not tell her - he buys her flowers instead.
A beautiful woman who is pleasing to men is good only for frightening fish when she falls into the water. - Zen proverb
There are two kinds of women - goddesses and doormats.
Men are women's playthings; woman is the Devil's.
Woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists.
I have found one good man in a thousand, But not one good woman among them.
Ecclesiastes 7:28
Better the badness of men than the goodness of women.
Ecclesiasticus 42:14
All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.
- Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus
Woman is a sick sheass, a hideous tapeworm, the advance post of hell. John Damascene, 7th Century monk & Saint
For a woman to study the scriptures indicates confusion in the realm. The Mahabarata, Hindu Scripture
A child also cannot be made a witness in a court of law, nor a woman . . . nor a cheat. . . . These persons might give false evidence. A child would speak falsely from ignorance, a woman from want of veracity, an imposter from habitual depravity. Hindu Scripture
The sacred books should be burned rather than made available to women. Talmud, Sotah 3:4, Jewish Scripture
Infatuation, aversion, fear, disgust and various kinds of deceit are ineradicable from the minds of women; for women, therefore, there is no nirvana. ... A woman may be pure in faith and even preoccupied with the study of the sutras or the practice of a terrific asceticism: yet in her case there will still be no falling away of karmic matter. Mahavira, Tatparya-vriti (Jain Scripture)
The god of death, the wind, the underworld, the ever-burning entrance to hell, the knife-edge, poison, serpent, and fire - women are all of these in one. The Ramayana
It is nature's law that rivers wind, trees grow wood, and, given the opportunity, women work iniquity. Buddha, Sutta-Pitaka
There are some meannesses which are too mean even for man - woman, lovely woman alone, can venture to commit them.
Women give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.
There is but one thing in the world worse than a shameless woman, and that's another woman.
A clever man will build a city, a clever woman will lay it low.
Women are not necessarily evil - but evil is necessarily feminine.
Where the Devil cannot go himself he sends an old woman.
Woman - last at the cross, earliest at the grave.
Better the devil's than a woman's slave.
Her grief lasted longer than any woman I have ever known - at least three days.
When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager that the man, if not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.
Women! There isn't anything so bad that they don't soon start to enjoy it. Even if they lived in a barrel of shit they'd start making a home out of it, with everything nice and cozy.
Woman: the hand that rules the cradle rocks the world.
There's a great woman behind every idiot.
Mothers, wives, and maids, These are the tools wherewith priests manage men.
No mischief but a woman or a priest is at the bottom of it.
Women should not take to religion; they are religion.
Woman: the hand that rules the cradle rocks the world.
A fellow explained why he always gets up for a lady standing in a bus: Ever since he was a child he's had a lot of respect for a woman with a strap in her hand.
No one delights more in vengeance than a woman.
Women learn how to hate in the degree that they forget how to charm.
There is no such thing as a dangerous woman; there are only susceptible men.
He who falls into the snares of women is like a bird that falls into the hands of a little silly child: the child plays with it merrily and is glad, but meanwhile the bird endures the pains of death, and undergoes all manner of tortures.
Then, my boy, beware of Daphne. Learn a lesson from the rat: What is cunning in the kitten May be cruel in the cat.
I don't like her. But don't misunderstand me: my dislike is purely platonic.
The perfect friendship of two men is the deepest and highest sentiment of which the finite mind is capable; women miss the best of life.
Friendship among women is but a suspension of hostilities.
Misogynist: a man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
To women, men are like big dogs that talk.
Behind every successful man stands a surprised woman.
No man is as anti-feminist as the really feminine woman.
Woman is a domesticated animal; the feminist has returned to the wild. The goddess has gone wandering, collecting a few bruises, developing a few survival traits. She is lost; the bed beckons her. She will soon return.
Feminists do not like real women nor, of course, real men either.
Modern Feminist humour:
Q: Why is a Swiss Army Knife like a man? A: Because it's cheap, it's everywhere and it's a complete tool.
Q: Why did God invent men? A: Because dogs can't put out the garbage.
Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry "We will not be dictated to", and promptly became stenographers.
If God wanted us to think with our wombs why did he give us a brain. - A feminist
The great question... Which I have not been able to answer...is, "What does a woman want?" - Freud
There is a tide in the affairs of women, which, taken at the flood, leads - God knows where.
Women usually mean the opposite of what they say, but not always, and usually their actions have no meaning, unless they do.
Men are stereotyped by feminists into the types of suppressed rapist or the gentle soul conditioned by society to a toughness that hides a natural disposition to weep and wash up.
I shrug my shoulders in despair at women who moan at the lack of opportunities and then take two weeks off as a result of falling out with their boyfriends.
After equality, wage parity, liberation of body and soul, and the extension for the ratification of the Equal Rights Authority, women still can't do the following: * Start barbecue fires * Hook up a stereo * Anything on a roof * Decide where to hang a picture * Investigate mysterious house noises at night * Kill and dispose of large insects * Walk past a mirror without stopping to look * Think
Men and women no longer have the faintest idea what to do with one another. Each sex looks at the other with suspicion. The slightest gesture (scratching an ear), the most casual remark ("How are your tomatoes?") are seen as hostile acts. Now that women are equal, they feel awful about it and wonder if they should have pushed so hard. Men would like to reach out and help but are afraid they will be smashed in the head.
Give women the vote and within five years there will be a crushing tax on bachelors.
When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.
Man's conclusions are reached by toil. Woman arrives at the same by sympathy.
A woman can believe anything in the world if there's no good reason for it.
Can you recall a woman who ever showed you with pride her library?
What passes for women's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency.
Woman's intuition
If women said what they thought they'd be speechless.
Women never reason, and therefore are (comparatively) seldom wrong.
Intuitions are the natural resource of a type of mind which is not adept at reasoning.
Womens' intuition is the result of millions of years of not thinking.
Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.
Women are too imaginative to have much power of reasoning.
No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all. Common sense is the privilege of our sex and we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it.
Women would rather be right than reasonable.
It took a million years to develop man's ability to reason, but it takes only a few minutes of feminine logic to destroy it.
Consult women, and do the opposite of what they advise.
But there's wisdom in women of more than they have known, And thoughts go blowing through them, are wiser than their own.
The sagacity of women, like the sagacity of saints, or that of donkeys, is something outside all questions of ordinary cleverness and ambition.
What do you mean by a woman's better nature? I did not know that a woman had more than one nature, and that is . . . nature.
When an ass climbs a ladder, we may find wisdom in women.
Women represent the triumph of matter over mind - just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.
There is no sincerity like a woman telling a lie.
Now what I love in woman is, they won't Or can't do otherwise than lie, but do it So well, the very truth seems false.
Women are far too clever to understand anything they do not like.
The best happiness a woman can boast of is that of being most carefully deceived.
Forgetting is woman's first and greatest art.
She had a complete ignorance of everything a woman does not need to know.
Taste: the feminine of genius.
Society is the book of women.
A mother loves her child more than the father does because she knows it is her own, while the father only thinks it is his.
It is only rarely that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.
Women never have young minds. They are born three thousand years old.
Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.
Whatever men may think about the study of man, women do really believe the noblest study of womankind to be women.
It always puzzles me to hear of professional women - are there any amateurs?
The hardest task of a girl's life is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious.
It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.
Woman are like death: they pursue those who flee from them, and flee from those who pursue them.
If God considered woman a fit helpmate for man, he must have had a very poor opinion of man.
God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more acutely.
God made the rose out of what was left of woman at the creation. The great difference is, we feel the rose's thorns when we gather it, and the other's when we have had it some time.
When one knows women one pities men, but when one studies men, one excuses women.
Men are always sincere. They change sincerities, that's all.
A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence, and a bad woman is the sort of woman a man never gets tired of.
Self-pity is one of the last things that any woman surrenders.
The reason women live longer than men is because they get more pleasure out of feeling miserable.
If all men told the truth the tears of women would create another flood.
It is sometimes argued that women have a hard enough time in this world, without telling them the truth.
A man who won't lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings.
Talk to me tenderly, tell me lies; I am a woman and time flies.
Man is the head, and woman his headache.
Never contradict your wife - if you listen a short while, she will contradict herself.
A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's - she changes it more often.
Consistency: the only jewel found among more men than women.
About the time a man thinks he has a woman fooled, she fools him by changing her mind.
Never trust a woman's final decision: it seldom agrees with the one that follows it.
If a lady says no she means may be, if she says may be she means yes, and if she says yes she's no lady.
Women's words are as light as doomed autumn leaves.
Woman is as false as a feather in the wind.
It is too great an insult to our sex to insist that the extent of our intelligence is an opinion of a petticoat.
Nothing makes a woman angrier than when her husband pretends to believe her when he knows she is lying to him.
The easiest way to change a woman's mind is by agreeing, disagreeing, or saying nothing.
. . . She's but a woman, As full of frailty as of faith, a poor slight woman, And her best thoughts but weak fortifications.
You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanishness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.
Where did you get those big brown eyes and tiny mind.
A woman asks you a question, then answers it for you, and then says you're wrong!
Like women's anger, impotent and loud.
A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humours and flatters them, as he does with a sprightly and forward child; but he neither consults them about, nor trusts them with, serious matters.
She felt in italics and thought in capitals.
WOMEN'S RIGHTS NOW!! Yes Dear. (exchange of Graffiti)
I'd rather talk to a man than a woman any day. Ten minutes exhausts them.
The reason women usually win arguments with men is that only dumb men are foolish enough to argue with women.
All sensible men are of the same opinion about women and no sensible man ever says what his opinion is.
You should not attempt to outwit a woman.
Women take up ideas, like clothes, to suit their mood and whim, whereas men only permit themselves one quasi-original idea, (or "ism"), like a neck-tie.
A woman's thoughts are afterthoughts.
The intellect of the generality of women serves more to fortify their folly than their reason.
The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is, and no one is surprised.
Such is the stupidity of woman's character that it is incumbent upon her, in every particular, to distrust herself and to obey her husband. - Confucius
Women like silent men. They think they're listening.
Silence in woman is like speech in man; deny it who can.
Many a man wishes he were as wise as he thinks his wife thinks he is.
I see the woman with a scarf twisted round her hair and a cigarette in her mouth. She has put the tea tray down upon the file on which my future depends.
"He gradually wormed his way out of my confidence."
A woman
A man never knows how to say goodbye; a woman never knows when to say it.
One hair of a woman draws more than a team of oxen.
Cunning: life is a battle of wits, and women have to fight it unarmed.
The wiles of most women are stronger than the wills of most men.
Some women are so clever that you can't talk to them for ten minutes without beginning to realize how brilliant you are.
A man is never so weak as when some woman is telling him how strong he is.
Let it be proved that women ought to obey man implicitly, and I shall immediately agree that it is woman's duty to cultivate a fondness for dress, in order to please, and a propensity to cunning for her own preservation.
There is something about cats and women that is viewed with distrust by mice and men.
On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women.
Women have a passion for mathematics. They divide their age in half, double the price of their clothes, and always add at least five years to the age of their best friend.
When they are going to be flagrantly brutally selfish, women love to talk of being fair.
Women have no sympathy . . . And my experience of women is almost as large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. Women crave _for being loved_, not for loving. They scream at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving _any_ in return for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so. - Florence Nightingdale
Women never love; rather they pity a man, mother him, delight in making him love them. Their tenderness is deepened by their remorse for being unable to love him.
You don't know a woman till you've met her in court.
Man has his will - but woman has her way!
The practice of putting women on pedestals began to die out when men discovered that women could give orders better from that position.
The history of woman is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.
Women are just like Communists - if you do exactly what they want all the time you are being realistic and constructive and promoting the cause of peace, and if you ever stand up to them you are resorting to cold-war tactics and pursuing imperialistic designs and interfering in their internal affairs.
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them very little.
Samuel Johnsen (1709-1784)
Women now insist on having all the prerogatives of the oak and all the perquisites of the clinging vine.
Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.
Give a woman an inch and she thinks she's a ruler.
What difference does it make whether women rule, or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same.
The weaker sex is the stronger sex because of the weakness of the stronger sex for the weaker sex.
The phrase "weaker sex" was probably coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.
A woman of talents, if she be not absolutely ugly, will always obtain great power - raised by the weakness of her sex.
Women's rights are men's duties.
I disagree with the current phase of feminism. Women's sexual power is an enormous force. Feminists think only in terms of social power. - Camille Paglia
Men are run ragged by female sexuality all their lives. From the beginning of his life to the end, no man ever fully commands any woman. It's an illusion. Men are pussy-whipped. And they know it. - Camille Paglia
Men play the game; women know the score.
Women are the most powerful magnets in the universe and men are but scrap metal.
Society is now influenced, shaped, and even to a large extent controlled by women. This is a far cry from the world of our childhood, when society was controlled by . . . Well, as the author recalls, society was controlled by Mom. Christmas dinner for all the relatives, square dancing, the PTA, split-level houses with two and half baths - surely no man thought these up. Feminism seems to be a case of women having won a leg-wrestling match with their own other leg. There is only one thing for men to do in response to this confusing situation, which is the same thing men have always done, which is anything women want.
A woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who _is_ intelligent does not.
Women rule the world . . . no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.
- Bob Dylan
I want to see women equal to men - not so damned superior like they've been.
The only way women could have equal rights nowadays would be to surrender some.
A woman can be a serviceable substitute for masturbation - it just requires more imagination.
In adolescence pornography is a substitute for sex, whereas in adulthood sex is a substitute for pornography.
As much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping, as of a goose going barefoot.
Women wipe away their tears like sweat.
A woman weeps with one eye and laughs with the other.
The worst thing you can possibly do to a woman is to deprive her of grievance.
Regret is a woman's natural food - she thrives upon it.
Every woman is wrong until she cries.
She is on the verge of tears, her favourite perch.
Women give us solace, but if it were not for women we should never need solace.
Women want a mediocre man, and men are working hard to be as mediocre as possible.
Woman reduces us to the lowest common denominator.
We women adore failures. They lean on us.
Wisely a woman prefers to a lover a man who neglects her. This one may love her some day, some day the lover will not.
Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side, his noble instincts and his higher nature - and another woman to help him forget them.
There are two things I have always loved madly: they are women and celibacy.
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
Celia: Oh Charles - a woman needs certain things. She needs to be loved, wanted, cherished, sought after, wooed, flattered, cosseted, pampered. She needs sympathy, affection, devotion, understanding, tenderness, infatuation, adulation, idolatry - that isn't much to ask, is it Charles?
Womankind more joy discovers Making fools than keeping lovers.
If thou givest thy heart to a woman she will kill thee.
A woman blossoms for us precisely at the right moment to plunge a man into everlasting ruin; such is her natural destiny.
Woman spoils her first lover and practically ruins all the rest.
You can never be kind to a woman with impunity.
Men were born to lie, and women to believe them.
A wife should never be allowed to go alone to see her mother.
Man says what he knows, woman what she pleases.
To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue.
When a man dies, the last thing that moves is his heart, in a woman her tongue.
Mouth: in man, the gateway to the soul, in woman, the outlet of the heart.
Men have marble, women waxen minds.
Wives are young mens' mistresses; companions for middle age; and old mens' nurses.
Women are attractive at 20, attentive at 30, and adhesive at 40.
He must be Something in the City; that she may be everything in the country.
The wife should be inferior to the husband. That is the only way to insure equality between the two.
Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.
Socrates
The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals.
Women are neither equal nor different to men - they are inferior. Women rarely if ever organize themselves effectively because they are unable to think logically.
Women and people of low birth are very hard to deal with. If you are friendly with them, they get out of hand, and if you keep your distance, they resent it. - Confucius
Water, fire and women will never say, "Enough!"
Women and elephants never forget an injury.
He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows.
A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to comprehend his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it.
A woman very much settles her esteem for a man, according to the figure he makes in the world, and the character he bears among his own sex.
Women never forgive failure.
Women commend a modest man, but like him not.
I like men to behave like men . . . strong and childish.
A woman
In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately, but horrible in a herd.
Every woman is a captive queen. But every crowd of women is only a harem broken loose.
Women singly do a good deal of harm. Women in bulk are chastening.
Two women placed together makes cold weather.
Three women make a market.
Women are not a hobby . . . they are a calamity! Were it not for gold and women there would be no damnation. By all means dream of marriage, but for God's sake remember to wake up! Nothing is worse than a woman, even a good one.
He seldom errs Who thinks the worst he can of womankind.
Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman.
Woman is a species of which every woman is a variety.
A woman's a woman until the day she dies but a man's only a man as long as he can.
I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by man.
It's a great advantage to women to be regarded as a race apart, an advantage which, as usual, they abuse unscrupulously.
There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future is invariably her husband.
A boy expands into a man; a girl contracts into a woman.
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
The opinion I have of the generality of women - who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.
John Keats
Man gets and forgets; woman gives and forgives.
Women chat and men converse, Women gossip, men freely curse. Women question but men have doubt, Women are masonry, but men are the grout.
The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.
A woman with a past has no future.
A man's age commands respect, a woman's demands tact.
There's only one thing worse than asking a woman her age, and that is to look incredulous when she tells it.
The years a woman subtracts from her age are not lost. They are added to other womens'.
As long as a woman looks ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.
Men are worried about how many years they have left, women how many they have had.
Women lie about their age; men lie about their income.
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything.
No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.
Nothing is more difficult for a woman than to decide when to begin her 30th year.
Thirty-five is a very attractive age; London society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years.
She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven.
An amateur is a young man who, when flattering women, is afraid of overdoing it.
Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women from the contrary.
A man likes you for what he thinks you are; a woman for what you think she is.
Women love us for our defects; if we have enough of them they will forgive us everything, even our superior intellects.
Time and circumstance, which enlarge the views of most men, narrow the views of women almost invariably.
Women's styles may change but their designs remain the same.
Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain.
Women are pictures. Men are problems. If you want to know what a woman really means - which, by the way, is always a dangerous thing to do - look at her, don't listen to her.
Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.
We have emancipated women, but they remain slaves looking for their masters all the same.
Women inspire us to do masterpieces, and always prevent us from carrying them out.
A woman's chief asset is man's imagination.
The mystery of women is the product of the romantic imagination of men.
Women are like tricks by slight of hand, which, to admire, we should not understand.
Women: sphinxes without secrets.
For a man to pretend to understand women is bad manners; for him really to understand them is bad morals.
Even when a man understands a woman, he can't believe it.
Men dislike women who don't understand them, and women dislike men who do.
Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch, and the sinner his justification.
As a woman's womb fills, her head empties.
The girl who is the image of her father is probably the echo of her mother.
Men understand clever women best because this type never show their real selves to other women.
If women got a slap round the face more often, they'd be a bit more reasonable. - Charlotte Rampling
A woman who strives to be like a man lacks ambition.
Behind every great woman is a man who tried to stop her.
A man, conceivably, could adjust to the knowledge that he was at a higher level than those around him, although no rational man could possibly enjoy that perspective; but to a woman it would be unbearable.
The really original woman is the one who first imitates a man.
When a woman behaves like a man, why doesn't she behave like a good man?
". . . she was human, as well as being a woman . . . "
She had man sense. It was the sixth sense that most women spent all their lives without ever finding.
In those rare individual cases where women approach genius they also approach masculinity.
To former Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan's back-handed compliment, "May I congratulate you on being the only man in your team." she replied tartly, "that's one more than you've got in yours!"
Nature gave me the form of a woman; my actions have raised me to the level of the most valiant of men.
Semiramis, Assyrian Queen
Some Words of my Own on Men and Women
It has been said that men will never win the battle of the sexes because they fraternize with the enemy too much. But it is not really a battle as such - more of a flirt. If only it were a true battle!
There will continue to be a vast gulf between the sexes for as long as men and women are attracted to opposite things - namely each other.
The worst mistake a man can ever make is to presume that a woman thinks like a man.
The reason I think women are inferior is that I judge them by the same criteria as I judge men.
If a woman has no character one can imagine she has a good one, but a woman of character is invariably bad.
A man can accept his inferiority in various matters because his reason has sway over his feelings; but a woman must have none superior to her.
What do you mean she's not my type? - I am a man and she is a woman.
Of all I have ever said, my words on women have generated the most disgust, which tells me I have struck on something of the utmost importance.
Men were made by women.
Women speak of equality (Problems) Men speak of difference (Superiority and inferiority) Difference is dynamic (Equality goes nowhere)
A woman will only trust a man who lies to her.
Woman despises the man who listens to her.
Treat women with respect and you will be called a misogynist.
If you want to make a complete fool of yourself in front of a woman, treat her as though she exists.
Treat a woman as if she has a will and she will think you are a dreamer.
Treat a woman as human and she will think you a loser.
Woman feels she does not exist if man treats her as a thinking being.
Woman wants a man who is ignorant and can take control.
Three rules for dealing with women: 1. Never argue with a woman. 2. Never speak the truth in the company of a woman. 3. Never believe anything a woman says.
Womens' self-proclaimed rights: 1. Not to know anything. 2. Not to do anything. 3. To claim to know and do everything.
Women are good for keeping secrets because nobody believes anything they say.
Women are not honest about being in love, or at any other time.
Man is evil because he is conscious of the thought that he is lying; but women are worse because they cannot be conscious of that thought.
The reason a woman lies about not being in love is because she stands to lose so much if she tells the truth. Love is the life and the death of women; it is but the game and the gremlin of man.
Women are excused their lying because it is their only means of survival.
A cruel woman will demand that you be friends with her before she will love you - so she can play with the corpse.
Only a brash, forceful, and unwomanly woman will tell a man she loves him. Real women are content to make him jealous.
Women enjoy making men chase after them during courtship because as wives they will have to carry the men.
Women ruthlessly take advantage of men during courtship, and during the few short moments when he thinks she is beautiful.
Woman is flattered to be called cruel - proud of her only power.
Women work by the principle that a man can be fooled into appreciating something if he has to fight for it.
A woman will not talk-through a problem in a relationship because she believes that reason is useless. In her mind the only thing that works is emotional violence.
A woman will injure you purely for the pleasure of patching you up again.
Man hates with his mind and body, woman with her heart and soul.
It is healthy for women to express their emotions; but men only do so when messed-up.
Good feminists are masculine.
Feminists are yet women.
Men become feminists to get into women's pants.
A woman appears wise when she apes a man.
A handsome woman looks more intelligent than she is.
An intelligent woman will find a thousand compatible men, but an intelligent man is alone in the world.
I have met women with mat-black obsidian eyes that never blink, cold externally, with a small warm sun of intelligence behind, trying to conserve its heat. Such is the rare woman of inner masculine strength who hasn't enough to share it.
If a woman spends all her time in academic study, to improve her character, she forgets to improve her character, and one day finds herself to be a mere educated woman.
Women resent the man who is more caring, perceptive and knowledgeable of human relationships than they are.
It's a brave man who can overestimate a woman's age.
While chatting with a girl, if she suddenly tells you of her sister's brain tumour, that is equivalent to a kiss.
Sadly, a woman's virtue and depth of character disappears during the third hour spent getting to know her.
Women resent being made virtuous by a man's awkwardness.
To preserve her virtue a woman requires to be asked.
When the last child leaves home they often take with them a lot more than their mother's heart . . . they take their mother's only excuse to live. Women have so neglected their minds that it is difficult to conjure an excuse to keep many women alive once their children have left home.
It is said that he who possesses a woman's body possesses her soul. This is because a woman must _be_ what she does. She cannot act at a distance.
To possess a woman's soul is to possess empty space. It leaves one feeling cheated.
A woman submits to a man while she has not received all that she wants to get.
Women blame men for everything, including that very fact.
Women do have a will, insofar as they will to be passengers.
Women have virtue in the moment, but over the space of two moments . . . femininity.
Women never do anything wrong because they never do anything.
Women: masters at doing things they don't want to do.
A woman needs to find excuses to do the things she wants to do. This is why she will believe absolutely anything at all.
The only decision a woman makes is to let the world make her decisions for her.
If a woman did something she would cease to be a woman.
A woman's individuality is defined by her ability to conform faster than the rest.
Feminization of democracy is a tautology.
When women gain power - nothing is real.
Equality: womens' right to do absolutely anything they want.
Feminist: one who believes in equality. See "Equality".
Woman's claim to equality is proof of her inferiority.
Giving power to women is like giving power to dreams.
Nunsense: the sense that nuns make.
There is nothing women can teach us that children and chimpanzees can't.
I told her that women were so foolish they thought giving birth to children was a form of creativity. But she thought it was an act of genius.
To prove that women are inferior treat them as equals and see what happens.
Women are naturally clean-shaven; most men artificially so. What I can't understand is why men aren't more consistent and shave their legs also.
When psychologists are asked to list the qualities of a healthy human mind they describe the qualities of the healthy male mind. Then, when asked to list the qualities of the healthy female mind, their list is not the same as that for the healthy human mind.
Women are good at trivial things because women think trivial things are important. Women are bad at important things because women do not realize how much harm they can do to the larger world outside of the small world of their immediate surrounds.
Women have babies to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.
Pretty women are for men without imagination. No woman is pretty if a man has imagination.
Plain women know a lot more about men than beautiful women do - they have to.
Women are the most unnatural of animals because man has prevented them from growing. Who knows what they may be capable of?
For a man to have the stillness of a woman he must be a god. Consequently one mistakes women for gods.
That a woman must develop herself intellectually is a duty. If it were only a right she would sacrifice it.
Cheerfulness: the feminine of struggle.
Cunning: the feminine of courage.
Potentially misleading: Nietzsche's statement "Happiness is a woman", because it might lead us to believe that women can make us happy.
Woman: infinite to see, finite to hear.
Women: from goddesses to grannies.
Old woman: . . . lurking inside a young woman.
Woman is a holiday.
Woman is a watercolour.
Babies are like women.
If you want to know what it feels like to be a woman, take drugs.
Woman: man's method of wearing a dress.
Women want men who support their values - so, if a man wants a woman he has to either give up all his values, or lie.
It is the woman who decides yea or nay; and if she says yea, then it is the man who decides.
The reason women blush so easily is that they have a lot to be ashamed about.
A man can trust no-one, but will trust a woman.
If a man respected a woman's decisions there would be no romance.
When a woman says no, she means no, except when it means that you haven't been forceful enough.
If women were naked they would need personalities to make them interesting.
The challenge of woman is to make her seem interesting.
Only the worst of men allow women to believe they have any value other than their appearance.
It is not enough to educate women, they must not be loved.
The best thing a woman can do for a man is to marry somebody else. The best thing a man can do for a woman is to make a man of her, which usually necessitates just leaving her alone.
After I comprehensively explained how Christians are false because of their weakness and effeminacy, someone said to me: "Does this mean Christians are almost as bad as women?"
Most men complain that they do not understand women. I complain that I do understand them.
Women are better adjusted to life, but men are better adjusted to death. Women live longer, but men are more often remembered.
At the age of six, boys and girls are essentially the same. The difference is that boys tend to remain at the mental age of six throughout life, while girls seem to regress.
Contrary to popular opinion, men probably talk just as much as women do. It just feels as though women talk more.
There's a lot to be said for womanhood, and it's all unpleasant.
Women renounce their sexuality when they enter the cloister, and men renounce their minds.
Women: cows with lipstick.
Nuns: cows without lipstick.
Nun: a refinement of fashion.
Seducer: a cowherd.
I'll never understand the notion of "equality of the sexes" - it is obvious that men are superior to cows.
The fact that women are cows is probably the most difficult truth to understand.
She was not a member of the herd . . . she was an individual cow.
What every man should be forced to say at his wedding ceremony to lend it some respectability: "My Kingdom for a Cow".
Cows and women have been shaped by the same evolutionary forces - mens' desires.
The reason men never blame women for their stupidity is that men have bred women to be stupid.
I tell ugly truths about women not to denigrate them, but to venerate God.
It is easy to control your desires in the company of women, and when reality is staring you in the face. It is much more difficult when they have left you alone with your imagination.
Sex is an instinct, love an emotion, and marriage is supposed to be a mature and responsible decision. But should there be _reason_, then there is neither sex, love, nor marriage.
Women need to feel compassion for others because weakness in others justifies their own weakness.
I will not sacrifice my life at the altar of woman. There are far worthier causes.
Women always have some mental reservations. This is because most of their brains are out of bounds to them.
Not only does a beautiful woman have more chance of catching herself a husband - she also has more chance of keeping him. At all times, men judge women by appearances.
The more beautiful a woman makes herself, the more ugly she makes others.
I get a strange feeling when I see a woman with naturally rosy cheeks . . . such beauty is so rare . . . And such immoral innocence!
A woman wears her tears like jewelry.
Women use make-up to highlight their worst features.
Good women never wear make-up - until they feel they need to.
She was there at the preappointed time all right, but had made herself up to such a degree that I couldn't recognize her. So I went home.
Feminism has made many women go underground, to the extent that they dare only wear frillies underneath or in the bedroom.
There's more to a woman than her external appearance - there's her underwear.
Pornography is degrading to women, but most women are too degraded to realize it.
It is much more difficult for a man to maintain a sexual relationship than it is for a woman. This is because for a man to arouse enough passion to produce an erection, an awful lot of self-deception and egotistic thought is required, which must first be realized, then adapted, and applied. Such thought can only be dominant or submissive - both repulsive.
Man is idealistic by nature; he doesn't want to be served by just any woman. But woman has no such ideals and will serve any man, if he be man enough to want her service. For she does not want the man, but the master.
What does it signify that woman was made from man's rib?: she's not the full quid.
Only women have complained to me that I try to confuse them with logic.
Feminists would make great advances if they were not so bothered about sexist men; that is, if they were not so womanish.
A strong and intelligent woman always seeks the company of a bad man. He must either be a ruthless manipulator who can make her feel like a woman, or a spineless wimp who can make her feel strong and intelligent.
Women are so alike, that if a man can win the love and devotion of just one woman, he feels he has conquered the entire female species. And if he cannot, then the entire female species has conquered him.
Women tend to love men for their character, while men tend to love women for their looks. This is because men already have character . . . now all they require is visual stimulation and the softening caress of feminine innocence. Women need a base, men seek a supplement.
A man needs a simple woman to help him forget just how simple women are.
A man wants a woman to be submissive, not necessarily to him, but to the world. This is what attracts him so.
Men are attracted to women who will not say "yes", and women are attracted to men who will not ask.
Men and women experience two different kinds of love: for women love is the love of money and motherhood, but for men it is the love of perfection and a good screw.
There are advantages to being poor. For one thing, you won't have any trouble with women.
If a man wants a woman all he needs is a bunch of keys on his hip, or a car - same thing.
A woman plays hard to get to distract a man from thinking that she will be impossible to get rid of.
Virginity: that which makes a woman seem to have a will.
A man must have a relationship with a woman before she will agree to it.
Woman wants man to initiate the relationship so she knows he will be bold and brainless enough to be her protector.
If you love a woman without permission that is equivalent to rape.
Violent men make women feel safer because they appear better protectors.
If you like women then you should never treat them with respect. I know this because I have vowed to treat all women, at all times, as though they were human beings.
I have a natural tendency to treat all women as human beings, which is probably explained by the fact that I never had any sisters.
The greatest conquest is to have a woman pursue you, even though you are both poor and intelligent.
A woman will not make heavy demands on a man till she has trapped him.
There is nothing more intimidating to a man than a woman's desires.
Men are more creative than women, especially in ending a relationship.
If a girl can comprehend the word "soul" she is not beautiful.
To be popular with women, be sure never to mention the fact that women as a class are less rational and hence inferior to men.
No man fully resents knowing magnificent truths until it has cost him the affections of a woman.
A woman's life ends at thirty-five, at which time a man's life is often just beginning.
Women die in their eighties, fifty years longer than their lifespan.
Even a mediocre man is renowned by his contempories if he procures the love and devotion of a beautiful woman. But it is the solitary man of truth who is renowned by posterity.
No man can monopolize a girl's mind and destiny more comprehensively and deeply than the author of the book she reads.
Men put women up on a pedestal for two reasons: firstly, it is a good position for looking up their dresses, and secondly, it doesn't give them any room to do anything and cause any trouble.
Women think it is irrational to have principles because you have to value one thing more than another.
Women think it unfair to be judged lacking in virtues they are not even interested in.
It doesn't do any good talking to women about rational thought - they haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about.
Any generalization is too big for a woman's mind, including this one.
Women have a low opinion of men because they cannot judge what they cannot conceive.
The wisdom of women saves them from getting involved with thinking men.
Woman cannot appreciate intelligence in man for to do so would be to admit the lack of it in herself.
Men are intelligent enough not to understand women, but not intelligent enough to understand them, whereas women foolishly understand men.
Behind every great man there is a woman laughing at him.
Woman's philosophy: I wear see-through, therefore I am.
Man's philosophy: I think therefore I offend.
A man should aim to think as much as a woman feels.
Suffering for ideas is a foolishness women cannot understand.
If women ever had to live in the real world they'd soon have a lot more respect for men.
Men think what they will do in the world, and women think what they will have out of it.
When a man realizes how close a woman's "Yes" is to her "No", he no longer wants her "Yes" because her "No" means so little.
"My wife is upstairs changing her mind".
A woman has no thought of her own, but lives purely in response to the forces of the moment. What then of her love and approval? What can it ever mean?
Woman believes man's lies because she cares only about feelings, not future. She cannot realistically appreciate an honest man because honesty is superfluous to feelings.
Many women are convinced that the reason Jesus never got married was that he never met the right girl.
I am always amazed by women's ability to instantly detect my motives which I do not have.
The reason women don't pursue men, and are happy with whatever comes their way, is that they believe all men to be the same.
When a woman hates a man she does not know (which happens often) she does not take his past into account, nor her own. She can easily judge a man to be an evil, manipulative, womanizing woman-hater, even if he be a saint who has never so much as laid sheep's eyes on a woman, let alone wolf's paws.
Women hate the man who speaks profoundly and obscurely; for it means that he does not need the company of women, never needs to explain himself, which means that he has not been tamed and therefore probably has a low opinion of women. Women far prefer the man who mistreats them to the one who gets away scot-free. It is for the same reason that we prefer people to do useless work badly than enjoy themselves constructively doing nothing.
If you have never hurt a woman then you hurt women terribly, for you are free.
If you do not cause a woman grievance you will not engage her very deeply.
Overpopulation is by far the biggest problem facing the world today, but who blames women for wanting too many babies?
It is said that women should not be criticized because they are a Natural Force, and beyond criticism. But if Natural Forces are allowed to run rampant there is great destruction.
Throwing stones is safe if you do not live in a glass house, or if you are a woman or a child.
Anyone who criticizes women is a misogynist.
Women think that if a man loves anything more than he loves women he is a woman hater - and they are right.
Women are mysterious creatures; they sometimes appear superficially deep and at other times deeply superficial.
The horrifying thing about the mystery of woman is that there isn't one.
The less respect one has for ones rival, the more one is tortured by jealousy; not for the particular woman involved by any means, who has disqualified herself, but by jealousy for _recognition_.
I can think about women, from a distance, but to actually talk to them is going a bit too far.
What can a wise man say to a woman without making a fool of himself?
If you must talk to a woman, do so in private where no-one can hear the foolishness of what you are saying.
Man chats up woman with his pants down.
For a man to win the affections of a woman he must talk to her. But to talk to her he must sacrifice his mind and dignity, for what can a man say to a woman of any consequence?
All a woman really wants is for her man to talk to her, but this is precisely what he cannot stand to do, and is often the reason for his early leaving. Having fished-out her shallows, any further talk is insulting. If a man cares for such a woman, he should not talk to her in the first place.
I do not keep the company of women because I don't believe sex is worth paying for.
I dislike the company of women because I don't like having to tell people what to do.
One can envy a man who buys a prostitute for the evening, until one reminds oneself of the price he pays in cash and dignity; as when a man has a woman's attention at any time.
A man may pay little for one woman, but pays a hundredfold with the hundredth.
There is no drug more disabling than women.
Who ever heard of a woman seeking the truth? One can perhaps imagine a schoolgirl seeking truth, for a school project, but not a woman for any reason.
A woman thinks a man is unethical if he tries to measure her by ethical standards, for the reason that a woman cannot comprehend ethics.
Kierkegaard's most terrible "secret" concerning his mother, was, I believe, simply his knowledge of what woman really is.
Women believe that the concept of evil is evil.
The thing that most turns me off women, and also the most revealing thing about them, is the men they have loved.
Nothing destroys a man more thoroughly than being rejected by a woman whom he considers to be more inferior than he is normally prepared to tolerate.
What kind of a legacy does a man leave his children if he goes down on his hands and knees before his inferior - I mean a woman, a feminine woman.
The most intelligent women in the world are female impersonators.
A woman, like a child, has only the shallowest and most insubstantial of thoughts. If you were to try to paddle your feet in her oceans, you wouldn't even get your feet wet.
Women love the intimacy, men the idea. Intimacy is surface, idea is depth.
Even when women serve men, they don't respect them.
Someone asked me for an aphorism about artificial intelligence, so I gave them one about women: "The way technology is going, we will soon be able to give women artificial intelligence."
Women are more in touch with their two feelings (smugness and terror) than men are with their ten thousand.
Women are undoubtedly superior to men, if only men would give them a chance!
No woman can understand this aphorism.
Men never speak the truth in the company of women - no woman can ever know this, not even if it is explained to them.
Man is intelligence longing for sex, and woman is sex longing for financial security.
A woman looked down at her baby's hand . . . and knew there was a God. I looked at the woman and knew there was a Devil.
When I meet a girl, the last thing I want to talk about is reality, but after five minutes I'm talking about the inferiority of women.
Women feel shame because they cannot see things in perspective. Men feel guilt because they can.
The price a man pays for sex is very often having to keep the company of women.
A man may become wise, If he really tries. But all women are born wise, In their own eyes.
How can I tell people not to believe in God if I believe in Woman?
If women are good people then why aren't they listening to a word I'm saying?
It is good to condemn the feminine, but beware that in so doing you do not immortalize it in yourself.
Men don't want to learn about women because they don't want to learn about themselves.
Yes, man is great because he is a mountaineer. But as Nietzsche says "I sought for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideal." As great as striving makes a man compared to women, he strives for so little!
Love
The little trouble in the world that is not due to love is due to friendship.
A woman's friendship ever ends in love.
Love and friendship exclude each other.
Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.
Love blinds us to ugliness instead of opening our eyes to beauty.
Scratch a lover and find a foe.
Sex alleviates tension, and love causes it.
If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.
A lady of forty-seven who has been married twenty-six years and has six children knows what love really is and once described it like this: "Love is what you've been through with somebody."
Woman is flax, Man is fire, The Devil comes, And blows the bellows.
Love, like death, changes everything.
To be loved is very demoralizing.
Man and woman have entirely different concepts of love, so there are two loves, and they are so unlike as to deserve different names. The love of woman is devotion; the love of man is to want devotion. Woman gives herself; man acquires more.
Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.
Love with men is not a sentiment, but an idea.
Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance.
To inspire love is a woman's greatest ambition. It's the one thing women care about and there's no woman so proud that she doesn't rejoice at heart in her conquests.
Man loves where he must; women must love - somewhere.
If you wait for a girl to come to you, you can always be sure of receiving an invitation to her wedding.
Man loves little and often; woman loves much and rarely.
In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man.
When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not.
Love never knocks at the door of a woman's heart; he goes in, drives philosophy out, shows wisdom the door, then rules supreme.
A woman in love is less modest than a man; she has less to be ashamed of.
To a woman the first kiss is just the end of the beginning; to a man it is the beginning of the end.
Every love's the love before In a duller dress.
We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first.
Love makes time pass, and time makes love pass.
We love someone for what they are not, and quit them for what they are.
Falling out of love is very enlightening; for a short while you see the world with new eyes.
If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.
Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.
If a woman wants to hold a man she has only to appeal to what is worst in him.
No one in love is free - or wants to be.
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned.
A man is given the choice between loving women and understanding them.
You have to live with a woman to really misunderstand her.
The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom.
When a man has a vacant look, it's usually because a girl is occupying his mind.
No man, or woman, was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long, rainy days in the country has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed.
Absence: the common cure for love.
Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured.
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
Women never acknowledge that they have fallen in love until the man has formally avowed his delusion and so cut off his retreat.
A modest girl never pursues a man any more than a mousetrap pursues a mouse.
Courtship begins with a man fishing for a girl, and ends with her making the catch.
A man always chases a woman until she catches him.
A man can damn by a wink, a woman by a nod.
A woman knows the value of love, but a man knows its cost.
Even the rosiest of lips must yet be fed.
It is written in the code of love: He who strikes the blow is himself struck down.
Each man kills the thing he loves. By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss The brave man with a sword!
Faint heart never won fair lady, or escaped one either.
It's better to go broke than never to have loved at all.
Once a woman has given you her heart you can never get rid of the rest of her.
When a woman begins to count on a man, his number is up.
Once a woman is in your arms, she's on your hands.
If only one could fall into the arms of a woman without also falling into her clutches.
The law of gravity doesn't always work: it is usually easier to pick up a girl than it is to drop her.
The game of love cannot be played with the cards on the table.
Romantic: the sort of fellow who, if he were a bacteriologist, would report the streptococcus pyogenes to be as large as a St Bernard dog, as intelligent as Socrates, as beautiful as Beauvais Cathedral, and as respectable as a Yale Professor.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
Romance is the state midway between past and present.
Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman.
Many a girl spoils a perfectly good romance by falling in love with the man.
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
Nothing annoys a man as to hear a woman promising to love him "forever" when he merely wanted her to love him for a few weeks.
If it were not for poetry, few men would ever fall in love.
A man first realizes he loves a girl when he begins to get mad at people who say she's stupid or homely.
A woman loves with all her heart and soul; and a man with all his mind and body.
No woman is wholly convinced that a man really loves her until he buys her something she doesn't need at a price he can't afford.
Most women would rather be loved much than wisely.
A man who loves wittily is a man who is not in love.
Love and potatoes both spring from the eyes.
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.
It is easier for a woman to keep half a dozen lovers guessing than to keep one lover after he has stopped guessing.
I have every reason to love you. What I lack is the unreason.
Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason.
A lover who reasons is no lover.
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."
To love is to allow abuse.
To love is to suffer, to be loved is to cause suffering.
If love is judged by its visible effects it looks more like hatred than friendship.
The course of true love never runs smooth - it usually leads to marriage.
True love: an old-fashioned sentiment.
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar.
In love, victory goes to the man who runs away.
Those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love's tragedies.
The man who is disappointed in love usually lives to be glad of it.
Many a man's death is due to a broken heart; if he hadn't broken a woman's heart, she wouldn't have shot him.
The girl who thinks she has broken her heart has only sprained her imagination.
There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion.
Every day men sleep with women whom they do not love, and do not sleep with women whom they do love.
We ought not to complain if someone we dearly love behaves now and then in ways we find distasteful, nerve-wracking or hurtful. Instead of grumbling we should avidly hoard up our feelings of irritation and bitterness: they will serve to alleviate our grief on the day when she has gone and we miss her.
A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her.
Let the man who does not wish to be idle fall in love.
Sometimes I wish I could fall in love. Then at least you know who your opponent is.
Love has a thousand ways to please, But more to rob us of our ease.
Every time a woman gives a man a piece of her mind she loses a piece of his heart.
A woman can be anything that the man who loves her would have her be.
It is terrible to be alone, and it is terrible to be in love, but one is cheaper than the other.
When a man makes love to a woman who is covered in make-up and perfume, he is not making love to an individual, but to a department store.
There is often most love where there is the least acquaintance with the object beloved.
Love cures all but love.
The punishment for love is love.
There is no difference between a wise man and a fool when they fall in love.
No one acts more foolishly than a wise man in love.
Infatuation is what makes an intelligent man look foolish to a foolish girl who looks intelligent to him.
Even the wisest of men make themselves fools about women, and even the most foolish women are wise about men.
When a woman makes a fool out of a man, she seldom does it without his cooperation.
Men want to be a woman's first love. Women want to be a man's last romance.
Men love with their eyes, women with their ears.
Love is sex and sentiment.
Love is the need to escape from oneself.
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
Love is liking someone better than you like yourself.
Love is the fruit of an idle brain.
Love is the crocodile in the river of desire.
Love is being stupid together.
Love is trembling happiness.
Love is a game that always begins with courting days and ends with days in court.
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Love is a fan club with only two fans.
Love is a religion with a fallible god.
Love is a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others.
Love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Love is a sort of fever of the mind, which leaves us weaker than it found us.
Love is a word used to label the sexual and emotional excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old.
Love is yesterday's illusion, today's allusion, and tomorrow's delusion.
Love is a game in which both players always cheat.
Love is a product of habit.
Love is the renunciation of one's personal comfort.
Love is what happens to a man and a woman who don't know each other.
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man.
A lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the house.
Love is based on a view of women that is impossible to those who have had any experience of them.
Love is a mood - no more - to man. And love to woman is life or death.
Love is the whole history of a woman's life, it is but an episode in a man's.
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
Love is a season ticket on the shuttle between heaven and hell.
Love is a bottomless pit.
Love is a fiend, a fire, a heaven, a hell, Where pleasure, pain, and sad repentance dwell.
Love is the last and most serious of the diseases of childhood.
Love is a perverse superstition found amongst some few decadent peoples.
Love is a state of mind which has nothing to do with the mind.
Love is a fever which marriage puts to bed and cures.
Love is a disease which begins with a fever and ends in pain.
Love is the only fire for which there is no insurance.
Love is a wretched masking of egotism, lust, masochism, and fantasy, under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness.
Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses.
Love is like those second-rate hotels where all the luxury is in the lobby.
Love is like a malarial fever; one day raging, the next so chilly that blankets heaven high were as naught to warm it.
Love is like a bazaar. The admittance is free but it costs you something before you get out.
Love is like measles - all the worse when it comes late in life.
Love is like the moon; when it does not increase it decreases.
A girl may love you from the bottom of her heart, but there's always room for some other guy at the top.
Many a girl burns up her boy friend with an old flame.
Jealousy is always born with love, but does not die with it.
Love doesn't really make the world go round. It just makes people dizzy so it looks like it.
A man in love thinks that nothing is good enough for her except himself.
Courtship is that period during which the female decides whether or not she can do any better.
Courtship is the period when a girl finds out that her strength lies in her weaknesses.
What is puppy love? The beginning of a dog's life.
He imagined that he was in love with her, whereas I think she did the imagining for him.
The artist has won through his fantasy what he could only win in his fantasy: honour, power, and the love of women.
The only true love is love at first sight; second sight dispels it.
Love is said to be blind, but I know lots of fellows in love who can see twice as much in their sweethearts as I can.
The trouble with blind love is that it doesn't stay that way.
Love is blind to everything but fat.
Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.
Love comes unseen; we only see it go.
He ploughs the waves, sows the sand, and hopes to gather the wind in a net, who places his hopes in the heart of a woman.
By the time you realize what love can do, the damage has already been done.
The proof that experience teaches us nothing is that the end of one love does not prevent us from beginning another.
The time I've lost in wooing In watching and pursuing The light, that lies In woman's eyes, Has been my heart's undoing. Though wisdom oft has sought me, I scorned the love she brought me. My only books were womens looks And folly's all they've taught me.
Sign-off to a letter: "With love or what you will."
Some Words of My Own on Love
If I loved as much as others I would hate as much as they.
We expect others to love us yet remain trustworthy.
I am sometimes selfish enough to want to feel loved and to give love, but rarely am I selfish enough to do so.
Love is so common as to appear normal.
If two people love each other they should try to get to know each other better.
Love and marriage are proof enough that we are related to the apes.
Distance makes the heart grow stronger, not fonder.
Love essentially involves being responsible to make sure that another person does not get bored.
Love is attracted to ignorance.
If a man knows not the bliss of being struck with a phenomenal love, he knows not temptation.
The purpose of love is to ensure that even the strongest reproduce.
Men who love women have no respect for them.
The trouble with loving someone is that you can't just know them at the time you want to love them - you have to know them _all the time_. It's really no good pretending you don't know them.
Saying "I am in love with you" is a lot different to saying "I love you", and is a lot more honest. It is a bit like saying "insanity has control of me".
He who loves never, lives best.
The bravest thing men do is love women.
Men always hate the woman they love. Women always love the man they hate.
A woman's first love is never the first; there are no truly virginal women.
A woman can mean everything to a man - until some other woman takes an interest in him.
Love conquers all but absence.
Love is a crutch that breaks when you lean on it.
Love is too much like hard work.
Love is blind and marriage is the darkness.
Love: hating together.
Love: the grand thief of time.
Love: a consequence of the human tendency to simplify experience - achieved in this case by discarding information about the future.
Love - a drop of water in an ocean of tears.
I love you more than yesterday, and tomorrow.
I am not in love with you. I only love you when I am reminded of you.
Do not be hurt by the hatred of a woman; it means as little as her love.
Don't feel cheated when a woman loves a lesser man. She doesn't love the sun either, yet it shines.
For me to love a woman I must respect her. For me to respect a woman she must be a good woman of principle. Hence, for me, love is not possible.
A wise man cannot accept the love of a woman who loves unwise men, for the reason that he cannot allow reason to be valued equal to unreason.
The man who knows himself to be a superior man cannot accept the love of a woman, for in doing so he would then also have to accept the love she felt for those men past, and the love she will feel for those to come.
Men do not _respect_ women - not intellectually. Hence, as far as I'm concerned, men cannot love women.
Women love the boastful man because they are not allowed to boast themselves.
He tries to steal the first kiss, and tries, and tries. He tries exactly three times. Then he leaves. She ends up trying to make him take what he pleases . . . but masculine pride can only take so much abuse. Well, . . . perhaps he tries only the once, and not all that hard, but it certainly feels like too much hard work!
I am a loser. Just when I want to feel rejected by women they go and make me feel wanted.
If a man is pure it is nearly always because he has not chanced upon the right woman.
Woman loves the man who thinks, but the man who thinks does not love woman.
Yes, woman loves the man who thinks, _but not the man who_ _lives by his thought_.
Nothing spoils a romance so much as honesty in a man.
Some need to have sex with the one they love to dissolve the painful illusion of it all. Others abstain from sex to preserve a hope of the ideal - not only the ideal of love, but the ideal of independence.
The trick to being an idealist is to never act on your love, which would shatter the ideal. The trick is to never fall in love with someone who will not disappoint you.
If love is returned, it is not a great love.
How many have there been who entered the monastic life, not to renounce their love of woman, but to _preserve_ it?
I cannot love any woman who is so unsure of herself as to feel love.
A woman's face is never so contorted and ugly as the moment she is struck with the realization that she is in love with you.
Women are unreliable: if you ask a woman out, you cannot rely on her to say no, and if she says yes, you cannot rely on her to be unfaithful.
If a woman loves me, how can I ever trust her again?
If a woman loves me, she ceases to be beautiful, and I can therefore never trust her again.
It is far less cowardly to love a naive, foolish, homely woman who will reject you, than it is to love an intelligent, sensible, beautiful woman who is in love with you.
If a man is noble enough to refrain from pressuring a woman, then he will refrain from loving her, for love is the greatest of pressures. Much less would he declare his love.
It is difficult to decide upon the least immoral course of action regarding someone you are falling in love with.
I cannot involve myself with a woman when there is no chance of marriage and a true everlasting love, nor if there is the slightest chance of it.
Two kinds of women are dangerous to a man: those who make him feel comfortable, and those who electrify him.
To be loved you must give love, which explains why only fools are loved.
You cannot win a woman just the once and be done with it; you have to humiliate yourself again and again.
There is no love without humiliation.
To love someone is humiliating because they do not deserve it.
To win a woman's affection is nothing to be proud of because women are motivated by love.
If your happiness depends on a woman's approval then your life is as insubstantial as her judgement.
Women judge by feelings, which I refuse to be judged by.
It is possible to be so much in love with someone that you don't want to go and spoil it all by actually talking to them.
A man cannot reason with the woman he loves: he cares about her too much.
A man wants to know about a woman's past until he is in love with her.
Loving a woman is not quite so bad as befriending one.
Some men will stoop to the lowest depths to win the love of a woman, even to the point of being friends with her.
Some men will stoop to the lowest depths to win the company and affection of a woman, including talking to her.
If you must fall in love, do so with a woman you can't talk to.
Love can make you marry a person you can't talk to, and wouldn't want to if you could.
Women criticize men for being egotistical, but if men were not egotistical women would live out their lives unloved.
Love is rarely mutual. While one person is feeling love the other is usually feeling guilt.
He who lives by love dies by it.
Where there's love there's hell.
A man needs to be loved if he has no other needs.
To me the pleasure of loving a woman is at best a concession. I am not prepared to pay one cent, wait one second, or suffer in the slightest degree even one inconvenient or nagging thought for the sake of something which is but a concession and an insult to my dignity. Thus I do not make concessions.
Any person of worth wants to be loved for the fact that they are different from everyone else. But in accepting love, the person of worth falls to the level of everyone else, and to a level undeserving of love.
To accept another's loving care and devotion is to take advantage of a mentally disabled person.
If you have trouble with love, love less, not more. Love not at all and be pure.
Love is intimacy. Intimacy is flattery. Love is flattery.
Love is the feeling you have before you know what you are getting yourself into.
Love is weakness.
Love and cowardice are really the same thing.
I stand a failure before love. I price myself out of the market. I cannot accept love without thereby making myself unworthy of it. Nor can I give love without thereby being unworthy of doing so. In any case, no woman can love me enough, _because_ they love me - because love is so faulty.
A couple in love know very well never to speak of anything significant. This is good training for marriage.
To want to be loved by someone is to want to be admired and respected by a fool.
It is just as immoral for a man to fall in love with a girlish, emotional, feminine woman as it is for a woman to fall in love with a brutish, forceful, masculine man.
Women have synthetic affections for heavy-duty use.
If a man suffers because he is without a woman, he can easily make women feel guilty and responsible for his situation. This is because the world view of women is centred around making a man happy, and women have nothing better to do with their time than take him under their emotional wing. Yes, a woman will enjoy feeling guilty because _another_ woman doesn't love him. Emotionally, women work together as one (nasty) creature.
Love is about fiddling fantasies. One does not fall in love with a person because they are truly good, but because they are good at stimulating one's imagination. With a stimulated imagination one can believe anything is good.
Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object. Or at least, to what one likes to believe is hidden.
A man will pursue a woman relentlessly - until she turns and faces him with wide-open whirlpool eyes. Then he very wisely runs for his life in the other direction.
If a woman doesn't chase after a man just a little bit, she doesn't really care for him; and if she chases him at all, he won't care for her.
He mainly desires her, but she mainly desires to be desired.
A woman is quick to love a bad man and hate a good one.
Jealousy is the only true measure of love.
If a girl keeps us guessing, she causes us pain. And if she doesn't, she causes us pain.
Love is something you like to feel once a week, but it demands that you feel it every dreadful minute.
One looks to see if one causes another pain, to see if there is any love there.
A plain woman can keep a man's passions alive much longer than a beautiful woman, for she does not spoil his dreams, does not impinge on them. She takes nothing from him, so fuels his dominant emotions.
If you wish to be loved by a particular someone, then make sure they know your name. If they do not know your name they will not love you. Love is that deep.
Women are most attractive when they are in love with another man, for then one is not faced with having to actually know them in a real sense. There is nothing worse than knowing what a woman does not think.
Romance is a war that is ended by a mutual declaration of love.
Romance is ninety percent expectation and ten percent chance.
A man finds more joy in winning a woman's love than in being loved. To win a woman's love is to be rewarded with a priceless gift from an angel, but to be loved is to be used by a vain fool.
While she is aloof you have the pleasure of playing God and making something out of nothing. But once you are loved she makes nothing out of you.
A woman often cannot help but laugh when a man divulges his love for her. She finds him ridiculous. Or rather, she finds his weakness and vulnerability a sharp contrast to his towering physical and mental strength. She suspects for the first time that she is the stronger. No surprise he then makes a swift retreat.
Does a man ever laugh when a woman can no longer contain her love for him, and opens herself up like a wound? No, for there is no contradiction. A woman making herself vulnerable has no shock value, as there is in the case of a man.
A woman's kiss is a beautiful thing, and expensive too. Each and every kiss costs twenty-four hours of your time in maintenance, and I'm not talking about the maintenance after the divorce.
You love the best in someone and bring out the worst in them.
You never feel securely in possession of another's love, because you know that the person they think you are is not you.
The lover wants to be useful to the loved one, but love renders one useless.
One wishes to appear strong and calm for women, which makes one weak and nervous.
Women give a man a reason to be happy, for if he is not happy he will not find a woman.
Any man can be graced with the love of a woman if he is prepared to pay enough.
Other men hold a certain appeal to women, a certain power that I comprehensively lack. They are prepared to sacrifice their freedom for the sake of women, make concessions and compromises, and in short, tell lies.
The problem with love is that marriage takes root in it.
Please don't praise me, my persistently single state is as much due to good luck as it is to good management.
A woman will go close to a man only if she believes he will stay close by her.
A woman only loves the man who has hurt her. It seeps into the wound. And only a bad man is bad enough to initiate such a relationship. Good men are left alone because a woman will not do any decisive initiating herself, not if she is a woman. The result is that women tend to hate the innocent man, because, without love, women know no other feeling.
Lovers love quarrels for renewing their love.
I hate to see a couple quarrelling because I know it is keeping them together.
I hate to see a man raising his voice or being rude to his female companion - he moves closer and she tightens the noose.
A woman with a past attracts the kind of man who, at the races, will bet only on the favourites.
Sex holds such a significance in relationships because it is the last hope.
A true friend is someone who would never swipe the girl you love away from you unless circumstances arose.
If nothing else, you can trust the one you love to be untrustworthy.
A woman doesn't want to be the one to decide she's in love . . . she wants to keep the advantage.
A man is forced to make many advances towards women because women know a man's advances count for so little.
To fall in love is a big decision for a woman, who must give her whole life in love. But it is a bigger still decision for a man, who, while giving only a small part of his life, stands to lose so much more. Yes, her's is a big decision to fall in love, and not one she likes to take alone. A bad man has no trouble in helping her, with his application of appropriate unrelenting pressure, but a good man respects her independence. If this good man is not quickly insulted by her hesitation regarding him, or even more so by her open-everything policy to external pressures and manipulations, and if he does not then leave of his own account, then she leaves him out in the cold anyway.
Don't be surprised when your loved one treats you like a stranger. If they knew you they wouldn't be in love with you.
"Rational love" - title for an astounding book.
The person you love makes you so unhappy that you need to love somebody else for relief. Tempting a person to love you is also tempting them to be unfaithful to you.
The more intelligent a woman is, the less I am attracted to her, because I do not want to ruin such a precious thing. I do however sometimes feel that I can allow myself to be attracted to an ordinary woman, because I am thereby only ruining myself.
Once in a while I meet a girl who brings out the ignorant side of me.
A woman's kiss can mean as much as a goddess's hand in marriage, or as little as the loving lick of a dog, depending on whether it is the first kiss or the third.
The first kiss is an awakening; The second is deeply satisfying; The third is insulting.
Young men sometimes choose a girlfriend by the fact that she has some quality of personality they can learn from and add to their own character. Young men are generally aware that they have a lot to learn. By contrast, women, and even girls, feel they have nothing to learn from men nor anybody.
_In love_
She feels like she's going down in a lift. He feels like he's going up. She is swept off her feet He finds his.
He sings She listens He possesses She possesses her possessor.
Assorted Jewels
Words are like leaves And where they most abound Much fruit and sense beneath is rarely found.
He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself in his own ink.
These days the greater part of whitewashing is done with ink.
Many a glib talker has a lot of depth on the surface but way down deep is very shallow.
Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't understand his own meaning.
He writes quickly, with the fluency of the artist who has nothing whatsoever to say.
Some of the new books are so down to earth they ought to be ploughed under.
What an author doesn't know usually fills a book.
You should read it, though there is much that is skipworthy.
It was a book to kill time, for those who like it better dead.
The ordinary man would rather read the life of the cruelest pirate that ever lived than the wisest philosopher.
There are two common ways to avoid thinking: one is to never read, and the other is to do nothing but read.
If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention.
The dictionary is like a Bible to the unenlightened writer.
In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.
The reason so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
A pin has as much head as some authors, and a good deal more point.
"Oh I see" said the Earl "but my own idea is that these things are as piffle before the wind."
. . . but to give an account of that subject would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.
There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.
Literature is an occupation in which you have to prove your talent to people who have none.
I quite admit that modern novels have many good points. All I insist on is that, as a class, they are quite unreadable.
I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, but found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.
Charles Darwin
It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.
The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public.
The road to ignorance is paved with good editions.
There is no worse robber than a bad book.
The multitude of books is making us ignorant.
Literature is mostly about having sex, and not much about having babies; life is the other way around.
Always read between the lies.
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
He who wields a pen is in a state of war.
An author's first duty is to let down his country. What is one's country but a land to stop one's feet from getting wet?
Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do.
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
I go on writing for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read; and the greater of these is the doing.
Being a writer is an aphrodisiac for women, for plain, intelligent women, but not all that intelligent.
For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it.
Some books are undeservedly forgotten, none are undeservedly remembered.
Anybody who doesn't like this book is healthy.
Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity.
Wit helps to play the fool with more confidence.
He was a master of paradox, but more often its slave.
Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.
It is more trouble to make a maxim that it is to do right.
When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it is a proof that it should be rejected.
He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.
But words are things; and a small drop of ink, Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
Pithy sentences are like the sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.
Some sentences release their poisons only after years.
The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy.
Proverbs: the sanctuary of intuitions.
Proverbs are the flowers of the rhetoric of a vulgar man.
The wise make proverbs . . . and fools repeat them.
There's nothing so lively as a deadly epigram.
Epigrams succeed where epics fail.
Epigrams cover a multitude of sins.
You can cram a truth into an epigram, the truth, never.
Aphorisms prick with the sharp point of truth, but usually with the sting removed.
A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it.
The more you say, the less people remember.
Think much, speak little, and write less.
You can remove all the words from a brilliant thought.
We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the people do not read it, and consequently do not influence it.
To write prose, one must have something to say; but he who has nothing to say can still make verses and rhymes, where one word suggests the other, and at last something comes out which in fact is nothing but looks as if it were something.
Goethe
If you find writing prose too boring you can always convert to poetry by starting each sentence with a capital letter, and making each paragraph a stanza, with each line ending on the margin except the last one.
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
A poet is a person who simply cannot keep his confusion to himself.
The pearl is the disease of the oyster A poem is a disease of the spirit Caused by the irritation Of a granule of truth Fallen into that soft grey bivalve We call the mind.
Show me a poet and I'll show you a shit.
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman.
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.
Music is the brandy of the damned.
Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
Music is essentially useless.
A great fondness for music is a mark of great weakness, great vacuity of mind: not of hardness of heart; not of vice; not of downright folly; but of a want of capacity, or inclination or sober thought.
We ought to have books teaching us not how to compose music but how to decompose it.
The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you are an artist.
How inimitably graceful children are in general before they learn to dance.
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist.
To reveal art and conceal the artist, is art's aim.
To be natural is to be obvious. To be obvious is to be inartistic.
Art is to protect us from truth.
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art.
Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
At one time I thought he wanted to be an actor. He had certain qualifications, including no money and a total lack of responsibility.
Actors are no better than creatures set upon tables . . . to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.
The girl who has half a mind to become an actress doesn't realize that that's what it requires.
For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die.
A learned man is an idler who kills time by study.
He not only overflowed with learning, he stood in the slop.
There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but no philosophers.
The philosopher who will not take the trouble to make himself clear shows only that he thinks his thoughts of no more than academic value.
Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge.
If I had read as much as other men, I should know no more than they.
Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching.
The scholar labours meticulously for years on end to produce his masterpiece - which the thinker destroys with a single sentence.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
A child miseducated is a child lost.
It is less painful to learn in youth than to be ignorant in age.
One impulse of vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. - Wordsworth, The Tables Turned
You can lead high school graduates to University, but you can't make them think.
Anyone who has ever been to school will always feel comparatively at home in prison.
Very few can be trusted with an education.
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Never let your studies interfere with your education.
We do not know what education could do for us, because we have never tried it.
Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught.
The average PhD thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.
Knowledge and timber should not be much used until they be seasoned.
"The more articulate, the less said" is an old Chinese proverb which I just made up myself.
The prime purpose of eloquence is to keep other people from speaking.
If you think before you speak, the other fellow gets his joke in first.
Clarity is so clearly one of the attributes of truth that very often it passes for truth.
A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
We use ideas merely to justify our evil, and speech merely to conceal our ideas.
Language is sometimes used to conceal thought, but never in a domestic quarrel.
A man never becomes an orator if he has anything to say.
It is a good answer that knows when to stop.
Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude and good company.
Letters such as are written by wise men are, of all the words of men, in my judgment the best. - Francis Bacon
I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)
Conversation is the art of telling people more than you know.
The average value of conversation could be enormously improved by the constant use of four simple words "I don't know".
If every man were straightforward in his opinions, there would be no conversation.
Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it.
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.
Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks but nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?
The reason people talk so much, is because if they didn't, their brains might start to work.
There is nothing so pedantic as pretending not to be pedantic.
. . . He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
Almost everything that is publicly said these days is recorded. Almost nothing of what is said is worth remembering.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person I preach to.
One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
One's eyes are what one is; one's mouth is what one becomes.
Talk is not always cheap.
Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words the less litigation.
The only successful substitute for brains is silence.
Silence is the wisdom of the fool. To make a noise is to be found out.
Remain silent and others suspect that you are ignorant; talk and you remove all doubt of it.
To one who knows the Truth, a moment's silence is a lifetime's wisdom.
A wise man's question contains half the answer.
The ignorant are aware of many mysteries and understand everything else, whereas the wise are aware of one mystery and understand nothing else.
Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters Suffering in order that they may have existence.
In this world the wiser one is the more one suffers . . . obviously humans must have a low tolerance for suffering.
Some peoples thoughts are so shallow they don't even reach their heads.
To a little fish, the waters are always deep.
Intelligence tests really do indicate those who have brains. Those who have don't take them.
What screens on television is an insult to the intelligence, but many never realize it.
Think before you think!
Nature didn't make us perfect so she did the next best thing. She made us blind to our faults.
Where logic sees contradiction, reason often sees none.
If ignorance is bliss then a lot of people are going to die of joy.
As scarce as the truth is, the supply is much greater than the demand.
Help fight truth decay.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed.
"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
The ignorance of most people gives one a rough sense of the infinite.
Nothing is impossible for anyone impervious to reason.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether people do.
Machines should work. People should think.
Things even up. Ignorance causes fear in one man, but courage in another.
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of the wise.
The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.
Time alone relieves the foolish from sorrow, but reason relieves the wise.
Most fools think they are only ignorant.
If a fool keeps the the company of the wise, even all is life, he will perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of soup.
Rotten wood cannot be carved.
The fool wonders, the wise man asks.
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
Wise men learn more from fools than fools from wise men.
You can't depend on anyone to be wrong all the time. Even a fool must now and then be right by chance, just as a broken clock is correct twice a day.
Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and the half-wise that are dangerous.
A fool and his guilt are soon parted.
A wise man can look ridiculous in the company of fools.
Fishermen, in order to handle eels securely, first cover them with dirt. In like manner does detraction strive to grasp excellence.
The praise of a fool is more harmful than his blame.
The proverb says that Providence protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know it because I have tested it.
The reason there's so much ignorance is that those who have it are so eager to share it.
There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group.
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.
Ignorance is a virtue, when it is ignorance of art and love.
There is not enough darkness in the whole world to extinguish the light of a small candle.
Truth is the most sublime, the most simple, the most difficult, and the most natural of all things.
A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout life.
The truth is so simple that it is regarded as pretentious banality.
When drunk, men often say sensible things which sound foolish to them when sober.
Truth exists for the wise; beauty for the feeling heart.
When a man knows Truth he has no need of mirrors because he sees himself perfectly at all times.
When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
Every man wherever he goes is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
All habits gather, by unseen degrees, as brooks run to rivers, rivers run to seas.
To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.
Habits are at first cobwebs; at last cables.
Habit is often mistaken for loyalty.
Motto: contented with little, yet wishing for more.
Be contented, when you have got all you want.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
Nothing succeeds like excess. Moderation is for monks.
Take care to get what you like, or you will end by liking what you get.
If you're not rejected at least three times a week you're not really trying.
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
Better dead than mellow.
Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.
If you won't be better tomorrow than you were today, then what do you need tomorrow for?
If some people lived up to their ideals they would be stooping.
What we earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are.
A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.
If a man hasn't discovered something he would die for, he isn't fit to live.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Avoid criticism - say, do and be nothing.
Morons have no enemies.
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.
Your character is built by what you stand for, your reputation by what you fall for.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
When the meek inherit the earth they cease being meek.
When no wind blows even the weathervane has character.
The Devil himself is good when he is pleased.
The man who has never been tempted doesn't know how dishonest he is.
The strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone.
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.
When we ask advice we are usually looking for an accomplice.
A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.
We live in a most unselfish era where hardly anyone is egotist enough to wish to do their own thinking.
If we meet no gods, it is because we harbour none.
As soon as you can say what you think, and not what some other person has thought for you, you are on the way to being a remarkable man.
If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?
He that loses his conscience has nothing left that is worth keeping.
The only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.
My life is so habitualised I don't even know who I am anymore.
Life is a gift of the immortal gods, but living well is the gift of philosophy.
Debating with a priest is like being savaged by a dead sheep.
He is a sheep in sheep's clothing.
To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.
Do not needlessly endanger your lives until I give you the signal.
The first among the flock is still a sheep.
Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him.
Only dead fish swim with the stream.
What if a man is buried alive from time to time? For every such person there are a hundred dead men walking the earth.
He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
Society is the process in which everyone fights all battles except the one that should be fought.
The length of life ought to be measured by the number and importance of our ideas and not by the number of our days. By this standard, some people have never been born.
I know of very few individuals who deserve to live.
Some people are alive simply because it's against the law to kill them.
The toughest time . . . in anyone's life . . . is when you have to kill a loved one just because they're the devil. - Emo Phillips
Fame is proof that people are gullible.
"Be yourself" is the worst advice you can give some people.
All that I care to know is that a man is a human being - that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
Be different, act normal.
Real life isn't like this.
It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
Of two evils, choose neither.
Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.
Virtue is more to be feared than vice because it is not subject to the regulation of conscience.
Active Evil is better than Passive Good.
What men call good fellowship is commonly but the Virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm.
Every man's happiness is built on the unhappiness of others.
Charity creates a multitude of sins.
Nothing costs so much as what is given us.
To become a religion it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.
Religions are what dreams are made of.
The masses are the opium of religion.
Man is quite insane. He wouldn't know how to create a maggot and he creates Gods by the dozen.
If there were a God, he would regard atheism to be less of an insult than religion.
All Gods were immortal.
I sometimes hope that I am wrong and God does exist, so that when I die I can tell him to his face what a fool he is.
There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy the world's religions.
No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus.
I must believe in Apostolic succession, there being no other way of accounting for the descent of the Pope from Judas Iscariot.
The greatest act of faith is when a man decides that he is not God.
For many, faith is a suitable substitute for knowledge, as death is for a difficult life.
There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten.
I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.
It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.
The only excuse for God is that He doesn't exist.
In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as part of the latter.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Christian humility is preached by the clergy, but practiced only by the lower classes.
Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan, spoiled.
The vows taken by a Catholic priest make him unable to conceive children. They also make him unable to conceive the Truth.
The Christian lives in a nightmare and thinks it is a pleasant dream.
Reason is, of all things in the world, the most hurtful to a reasoning human being. God only allows it to remain with those he intends to damn, and his goodness takes it away from those he intends to save or render useful in the Church . . . If reason had any part in religion, what then would become of faith? -
To the philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues.
One religion is as true as another.
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.
We're all going down the same road in different directions.
We must accept the other fellows religion . . . to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful.
To be an apologist for religious values one must enjoy the aroma of stagnant water. To be an apologist for enlightened values one must become a part of the turbulent rapids of causality.
A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
The fellow who argues that all religions should unite probably doesn't speak to his brother-in-law.
All religions die of but one disease, that of being found out.
A theologian is like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat which isn't there - and finding it!
It's a happy bishop who hasn't got a saint in his diocese.
It is no accident that the symbol of a bishop is a crook, and the sign of an archbishop is a double-cross.
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the gospels in praise of intelligence.
Beware when you take on the Church of God. Others have tried and have bitten the dust. - Bishop Desmond Tutu. (Speech, April 1987)
Ayatollah Khomeini will one day be viewed as some kind of a saint.
Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand . . . the passages that bother me are those I do understand.
Every burned book enlightens the world.
"The way he (George Bernard Shaw) believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many believe in no God at all."
Cleanliness is almost as bad as godliness.
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
Hell is paved with good intentions. All men mean well.
Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
It's a great kindness to trust people with a secret. They feel so important while telling it.
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
We are the people our parents warned us about.
My friends! There are no friends.
He who always finds fault with his friends has faulty friends.
Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.
Friends are thieves of time.
A reconciled friend is a double enemy.
An invitation to a wedding involves more trouble than a summons to a police court.
With each friend you buy you get an enemy free.
To find a friend one must close one eye; to keep him - two.
Judge a man by his foes.
Know a man by the company he avoids.
The wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.
Have no illusions, people do not think about you, but of what you are thinking about them.
Vanity is the result of a delusion that someone is paying attention.
You can say what you want to around home because no one pays any attention to you.
All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
While each man loves himself more than anyone else, he sets less value on his own estimate than on the opinions of others.
Most celebrated men live in a condition of prostitution.
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs less.
Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.
Man thinks he amounts to a great deal, but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat.
I hate babies . . . they're so human . . . they remind me of monkeys.
The question is not whether man descended from the apes, but when he's going to quit descending.
Who'd want to be an adult in this world? The normal, relaxed, well-adjusted adult is constantly exhausting itself playing a thousand games - 250 of these are spent in frantic pursuit of what it wants; another 250 are spent trying to avoid what it does not want; a further 250 involve elaborate justifications, trying to give the whole process some semblance of respectability; and the final 250 entail the efforts of trying to appear normal, relaxed, and well-adjusted.
Chess is about as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.
There's a time when you have to explain to your children why they're born, and it's a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then.
You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers.
All children are in danger of eternal damnation in Hell.
If a growing object is both fresh and spoiled at the same time, chances are it is a child.
We're all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy.
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.
The youth gets together materials for a bridge to the moon, and at length the middle-aged man decides to make a woodshed with them.
By the time we arrive at middle age, we have settled on definite convictions, most of which are wrong.
The young suffer less from their own mistakes than from the wisdom of the old.
It never occurs to a boy of eighteen that he will some day be as dumb as his father.
It must be a very weary day to the youth, when he first discovers that after all he will only become a man.
I never dared be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.
I am sick of society. I need solitude, isolation. My feelings are dried up, and I am bored with public display. I am tired of glory at twenty-nine; it has lost its charm; and there is nothing left for me but complete egotism.
Napoleon
After thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning excepting perhaps five or six, until the day of his death.
At thirty a man suspects himself a fool - at forty he knows it.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
People quiet down as they grow older, probably because they have more to be quiet about.
It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels, even to know what the feeling is.
As soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all.
Next to the very young, the very old are the most selfish.
Only the young die good.
We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.
Talking is a disease of age.
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man.
When you are over the hill, you pick up speed.
We are always happy in spring, but still there is a certain sadness. It looks as if everything were coming back except us.
It is a man's fate to keep growing older long after he is old enough.
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
Few persons despair of the human race after looking in the mirror.
A man must have grown old - lived long in order to see how short life is.
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
At twenty we don't care what the world thinks of us; at thirty we wonder what it thinks of us; at forty we discover it doesn't think of us at all.
At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel; at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty nothing at all.
May you live all the days of your life.
Where are you dying tonight?
Television is immortality - for it is impossible to die in front of one, isn't it?
The money men make lives after them.
Last will and testament: a pathetic attempt at immortality.
Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health.
Reading the epitaphs, our only salvation lies in resurrecting the dead and burying the living.
The tombstones of a great many people should say: Died at thirty, buried at sixty.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
What is time but the stuff delay is made of?
I am my own ancestor.
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another: it's one damn thing over and over.
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life, you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go.
Today is the last day of your life so far.
The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but by newspapers and the Bible.
There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
The Irish are a fair people; they never speak well of one another.
Next to death, the most infallible cure for a guilty conscience is success.
Nothing fails like success.
Nothing succeeds like failure.
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.
Success in almost any field depends more on energy, drive and persistence than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.
Confidence is the feeling you sometimes have before you fully understand the situation.
Nothing makes you as sure of yourself as ignorance.
Confidence is the feeling you have before you know what you are talking about.
The mind of a confidence man is like a flash of lightning - swift and crooked.
Life is not so bad, if you have plenty of luck, and a good physique, and not too much imagination.
When the people applauded wildly, Diogenes turned to one of his friends and said "Have I said something foolish?"
Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.
A practical man is a man who practices the errors of his forefathers.
Men are conservative after dinner.
Cause and effect are two sides of one fact.
All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.
Criticism is never inhibited by ignorance.
In judging others people will work overtime for no pay.
Each generation of critics does nothing but take the opposite of the truths accepted by their predecessors.
The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.
One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture. It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse, you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs.
I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live to be only about a hundred.
The place where optimism most flourishes is in the lunatic asylum.
Every silver lining has a cloud around it.
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.
Where there's a will there's a why.
Doubt makes the mountain for faith to move.
The first myth of management is that it exists.
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
Predestination was doomed from the start.
Hell hath no fury like an unjustified assumption.
Dangerous exercise - jumping to conclusions.
The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps.
Only the poor are forbidden to beg.
A rich man and his daughter are soon parted.
Appearance is an important factor in earning money, and vice versa.
Time is money if you are willing to sell your life.
I cannot afford to waste my time making money.
To be clever enough to make a lot of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
Money costs too much.
The grass next door may look greener, but it's just as hard to mow.
The heart contracts as the pocket expands.
What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.
The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people.
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.
In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up that makes us rich.
There are no dollar signs on tombstones.
No man ever said on his deathbed: "I wish I had spent more time on my business."
Money is the fruit of evil as often as the root of it.
The love of money grows as the money itself grows.
Nobody has money who ought to have it.
God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind person he selects to receive it.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
Most people sell their souls and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
The poor live the most independent lives of any.
Many people have character who have nothing else.
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
Confound these ancestors . . . They've stolen our best ideas!
Originality is undetected plagiarism.
Plagiarism is sometimes unrecognized originality.
Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism.
Everything has been thought of before; the problem is to think of it again.
I hold it a noble task to rescue from oblivion those who deserve to be eternally remembered.
The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.
Sometimes you can tell by watching a person what kind of a past he is going to have.
Disobedience in the eyes of any one who has read history is man's original virtue.
History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
History may be divided into events which do not matter and events which probably never happened.
The historian is a prophet looking backwards.
All history is the propaganda of the victorious.
Every man of us has all the centuries in him.
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
What is evil? - Whatever springs from weakness.
No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does.
There's only one thing that can continue to grow without nourishment: the human ego.
He is as good as his word - and his word is no good.
Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.
The human race will die of civilization.
Civilization is a good idea - somebody ought to start it.
The man who lives by himself and for himself is apt to be corrupted by the company he keeps.
I have no relish for the country, it is a kind of healthy grave.
A thing of beauty is a great expense.
The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from someone who does.
To err may be human, but to admit it isn't.
Some people have such open minds that nothing stays in them long.
The trouble with men who profess to have "open minds" is that nothing seems to take advantage of the openings.
There is a difference between an open mind and a hole in the head.
It is a pity that people travel in foreign countries; it narrows their minds so much.
Many a man thinks he is broadening his mind when he is merely stretching his conscience.
Broad-mindedness is the result of flattening high-mindedness out.
I am an idealist: I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
George Bernard Shaw
He who slings mud generally loses ground.
You cannot humiliate a hog by throwing mud at him.
I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing.
He that hath ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton.
Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.
The best way of answering a bad argument is to let it go on.
If you are dealing with a fool, dictate, but never argue.
It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
The surest sign that you have no brains is to argue with one who hasn't.
The man who listens to reason is usually thinking of some way to refute it.
If someone says they agree with you in principle, it means they haven't the slightest intention of putting it into practice.
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
So far as a man thinks, he is free.
The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving any excuse.
I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement.
I beg your pardon, I didn't recognize you - I've changed a lot.
Freedom produces jokes and jokes produce freedom.
When humour is meant to be taken seriously, it's no joke.
Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover about everybody's face but their own.
Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.
Don't trust first impulses - they are always good.
Few of us are brave enough for what we really know.
Somebody's boring me . . . I think it's me.
I am always embarrassed by compliments - I always feel that they have not said enough.
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
Modesty died when clothes were born.
Whoever blushes seems to be good.
Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing.
It is better for a young man to blush than to turn pale. Better a blush on a face than a blot on the heart.
Blush: a weakness of youth and an accomplishment of experience.
Women rouge that they may not blush.
Flattery is obnoxious to all except the flattered.
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Many a good face Under a ragged hat.
Every generation laughs at the old fashions but follows religiously the new.
Efficiency is a highly developed form of laziness.
Never learn to do anything. If you don't you'll always find someone else to do it for you.
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.
Life is like smoking dope - the more you suck the higher you get.
A lot of men think that if they smile for a second, somebody will take advantage of them, and they are right.
Don't believe that worry doesn't do any good. The things we worry about don't happen.
It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
Early to bed and early to rise and you'll meet very few of our best people.
Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead.
It may make a difference to all eternity whether we do right or wrong today.
Never do today what you can do tomorrow. Something may occur to make you regret your premature action.
It is well to put off until tomorrow what you ought not to do at all.
Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Invention is the mother of necessity.
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o' clock is a scoundrel.
The worm was punished for early rising.
Nothing helps a person's complexion like putting it to bed before 2.30 A.M.
The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try and make oneself useful.
A man who is very busy seldom changes his opinions.
The line is often busy when your conscience tries to speak.
My duty is a thing I never do, on principle.
When a man claims that he is working toward the betterment of humanity - and humanity agrees - you can be sure he is not.
Many a man works hard and saves money so that his sons won't have the disadvantages that made a man of their father.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
If you are good, you'll be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you'll get out of doing it.
You can tell some people aren't afraid of work by the way they fight it.
It is, no doubt, an immense advantage to have done nothing, but one should not abuse it.
Many a man holds both day and night jobs so he can drive from one to the other in a more expensive car.
Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do with their time.
Work is a form of nervousness.
I do not like work even when another person is doing it.
The lazy man gets round the sun as quickly as the busy one.
Industry is the root of all ugliness.
A man is known by the company that keeps him.
Nobody enjoys idleness unless they've plenty of work to do.
A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur; and dreaming is done in darkness.
The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action.
Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.
People who like to be referred to as dreamers are too often merely sleepers.
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
Actions lie louder than words.
Every great action is extreme.
However brilliant an action may be, it should not accounted great when it is not the result of great purpose.
One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity . . .
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
The only man who can change his mind is a man that's got one.
Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good.
People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering.
Everyone complains of his memory, but no one complains of his judgement.
Light travels inconceivably fast until it encounters the human mind.
You can make the average man mad by referring to him as the average man.
Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace.
To be rational is so glorious a thing that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title.
Emotion has taught mankind to reason.
My reason is not framed to bend or stoop; my knees are.
All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.
It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither.
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
If you tell the truth once, no one will ever believe you again, no matter how much you lie.
I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.
If you want to be thought a liar always tell the truth.
I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.
My desire, without any wish to make anybody's hair stand on end or flesh creep, is to call a spade a spade.
An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
Nobody minds a clever man, as long as he does not impart his cleverness to others.
If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him.
Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
Take care that no one hates you justly.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unreasonable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.
All thought is immoral. Nothing survives being thought of.
It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to everyone.
The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
They who know _the truth_ are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.
A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it.
You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it. But let all you tell be truth.
A half-truth is seldom the better half.
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied upon in a newspaper.
My way of joking is to tell the truth; it's the funniest joke in the world.
When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth.
If you always speak the truth you don't have to remember anything.
A little truth helps the lie go down.
Much truth is spoken, that more may be concealed.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three do.
I never lied save to shield a woman - or myself.
The exact contrary of what is generally believed is often the truth.
A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking.
Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.
Irrationally held truths are more harmful than reasoned errors.
Ignorance is preferable to error and he is less remote from truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is false.
There is no possible source of evil except good.
To have no morals at all is better than to have bad ones.
Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
Most people who flee from temptation usually leave a forwarding address.
The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come again.
The follies which a man most regrets in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire.
A good time is often a bad time held up.
Pleasures are like flowers: they die when gathered.
Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.
Smiles form the channels of a future tear.
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
A metaphor is something you shout.
The moment you have a plan you cease to be a revolutionary.
I have yet to see a problem, however complicated, which, when you look at it in the right way, did not become more complicated.
Socialism is the capitalism of the lower classes.
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires some sense to tell a lie well.
If computers get too powerful we can always organize them into a committee.
No poet ever interpreted Nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.
For most, life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Thought is never thrown away: wherever it falls, or runs, or rests, it fertilizes.
The purest water runs from the hardest rock. Neither worth nor wisdom come without effort.
No two things in Nature have less affinity than violence and reflection.
The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.
The superior man is distressed by his want of ability.
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.
Great minds discuss ideas; small ones, people.
A wise man knows everything; a shrewd one, everybody.
Great men grow tired of contentedness.
Few great men could pass Personnel.
If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.
If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.
Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges.
To do an evil act is base. To do a good one without incurring danger, is common enough. But it is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds though he risks everything in doing them.
You can't cheat an honest man.
I have solved practically all the pressing questions of our time, but they keep on being propounded as insoluble, just as if I never existed.
I have nothing to declare except my genius. (Oscar Wilde's response to an American customs official)
Genius is born, not paid.
Genius borrows nobly.
Genius is an infinite capacity for giving pains.
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them.
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
Genius learns from nature, its own nature. Talent learns from art.
Talent is an infinite capacity for imitating genius.
If you think the world is against you - it doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't.
A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
Those who never philosophised until they met with disappointments, have mostly become disappointed philosophers.
The sun is shining all around, but there are some who will only contemplate their own shadow.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.
What governs men is the fear of truth.
Children are afraid of being left in the dark; men are afraid of not being left in it.
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you.
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.
Judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made them.
I wish I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.
Self-love seems so often unrequited.
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
The worst thing about war is that it seldom kills off the right people.
A nation is only at peace if it's at war.
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.
The morals of today are the immorals of yesterday, the creeds of tomorrow.
The question is whether anyone has ever been in any serious way, not sane. I have examined the history of the human race with care. Kant gives the impression that he liked the inconcievable, but his books were too long; Einstein was interested in the Universe, but was bad at psychology; H.G Wells saw that research consisted of taking risks, but declined into sociology. My best candidates, therefore, are Nietzsche and Christ. It may be objected that their ideas cannot possibly be of interest, since one went mad and the other was crucified. However, I think we should not hold this against them: they may have felt a trifle isolated.
The most distinctive expression of Nietzsche's thought is contained in "Thus spake Zarathustra", and in the first few pages of it at that. Nietzsche sometimes confused his psychological ideas with social or political ones, particularly in books other than Zarathustra. This kind of mistake is easily made by a person who has been brought up in a sane world.
"Love thy neighbour as thyself": In fact, everyone _does_ love their neighbour as themselves. They desire that he shall accept second-best as they have done; that he, too, shall be made to realize his limitations and "come to terms with himself".
The human race is so megalomaniac; they think you're being conceited if you say you're better than everybody else.
A human relationship is what happens when you know you can rely on the other person to be as dishonest as you are.
The object of the educational system is to make the child feel guilty for the harm that has been done to him.
I decided to postulate infinitely many dimensions on grounds of economy of hypotheses.
The human race's favourite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them.
The human race knows enough about thinking to prevent it.
The human race expresses great concern that everyone should express their abilities to the full, and never more so than when those abilities are non-existent.
One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none.
Science arose by accident in the brief space when one great orthodoxy was loosening its hold and the new great orthodoxy had not yet reached its full strength. The first orthodoxy was that of religion which dominated the dark ages. The second orthodoxy is that of the belief in society, which is dominating the dark age now beginning.
Earning a living is regarded as moral. This is because a person who is answerable only to himself may or may not be wasting his time; an employed person is certain to be.
Job satisfaction consists of knowing that you are not actually doing anything to increase any one elses freedom.
It cannot be said that the movement known as the Women's Liberation shows any real recognition of the conditions actually necessary for any sort of genuinely intellectual activity. What appears to be the issue is that it is recognized that the position of man has not, in the changing social situation, deteriorated as radically as that of woman, and the solution envisaged appears to be to see that it does. The women concerned appear determined to demonstrate as thoroughly as possible their identification with precisely those psychological attitudes which have always prevented women from achieving anything.
Women are the last people to be trusted with children. Those who have repressed their own aspirations will scarcely be tolerant of the aspirations of others.
Marriage: there are less painful ways to commit suicide.
Men are children at heart and women are not. Women abandoned themselves to society.
Women are like sane people in general - you can't imagine how they can bear to be like it but the last thing they want is to be told how to stop.
Only the impossible is worth attempting. One is sure to fail at anything else.
The object of modern science is to make all aspects of reality equally boring, so that no one will be tempted to think about them.
If you stand up to the human race you lose something called their "goodwill"; if you kowtow to them you gain . . . their permission to continue kowtowing.
Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present.
Equality: It is easier to make people appear equally stupid than to make them appear equally clever.
Democracy: everyone should have an equal opportunity to obstruct everybody else.
In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.
With communism you can indulge your desire for power over other peoples' lives more directly than if you became a witch doctor or a social worker. What is unacceptable about capitalism is that it makes it possible for some people, sometimes, to do things that the collective does not want done.
I cannot write long books; I leave that for those people who have nothing to say.
Humility means (to the human race) to desire only what you can easily have.
Society, they say, exists to safeguard the rights of the individual. If this is so, the primary right of a human being is evidently to live unrealistically.
World Problems = Too Many People.
In the world there is nothing but prose and dishonesty.
Some Gems of my Own
Beauty is in the blindness of the believer.
Nowadays we live lives of length and quality but no value.
If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying.
Quoting oneself is a sign of supreme humility.
I write in quotes. You can quote me on that.
I write for writers. If my words do not inspire my reader to bring his thoughts to life on paper, then I am no writer.
The thinker writes with his blood, The poet with his tears, Women with their lipstick, And academics with their bile.
It is an easy thing to be a great writer, if you simply write the truth regardless of what anybody thinks - the truth everyone had once suspected but had been persuaded by society to look the other way.
The more you write, the more material you provide others to disregard you with. If you must write a lot, at least do it in small and dangerous bits that are hard to domesticate.
I would rather it were asked how I did not get published than how I did.
Writing is a lot like computer programming; grammar is the syntax, paragraphs are procedures, and the compiler is the human brain.
Some write for publication, while others want to write something worth reading.
I doubt the value of my having a book published because of the many grubby hands it will have to pass through before it reaches a worthy reader.
To get published these days you need to be a salesman, not a writer.
I do not particularly want to write more than aphorisms - not if just to show that I really mean them.
My greatest joy is bringing the immortals back to life.
It is my aim in life to say things I will never hear.
Good prose is only aphorisms joined end to end.
One word can say more than a thousand pictures.
Words often mean more when one doesn't know who wrote them: one suspects they may have come from God.
Too much polishing weakens a work. A few rough edges are needed to gain a purchase in the human mind.
There is a threshold quality and number of aphorisms at which point they become wisecracks.
If a person calls himself an aphorist one suspects he is more interested in composing witty sentences than thinking about the meaning of them.
Aphorisms are malicious. To effect a change of heart requires love also.
The fault of aphorisms is that they often don't have any more to say.
Half of all epigrams exaggerate, and this is one of them.
No one can ever defeat me in argument because I stick to a subject they know nothing about - the truth. And I don't get led into and bogged-down by irrelevancies.
People avoid the truth to give themselves something to do.
People prefer the hell of hell itself to the hell of boredom.
If you want to know human nature at its lowest and worst, get to know it when it's on holiday.
The advantage of concentrating on the effectiveness of one's speaking voice is that one cannot at the same time concentrate on the truth of what one is saying.
It is difficult to think deeply once you are renowned as a deep thinker - unless you are as deep as space.
Irrationality is the larger part of our inhumanity.
New Slogan: "Truth is valuable".
A statement which reminds me of feminine logic: "Life is a continuum which begins at conception."
A rational reason is a reason that agrees with reason.
There is only one thing more intellectually frightening than watching a sick and violent movie, and that's watching the rapture on the faces of the people watching it.
The heart is wiser than the intellect - says the heart.
The way to a man's heart is through his ignorance.
A gentleman is a man who will not squeeze a girl's hand unless he is prepared to marry her.
If there's one thing more daring than reading in public it's writing in public.
It is often undignified to die with dignity - too often cowardly and deceptive. Cowardice and deception are a cruel legacy.
Parents would rather their son be a salesman than a saint.
I can never seem to stop plagiarizing myself and being unoriginal. When I write down an idea I shamelessly copy it out of my mind, which has already had the idea! . . . I seem to be a parasite off the past.
Others often better express myself.
I have been accused of having too much imagination because I think of consequences.
Essentials for wisdom: Nothing to do, no one to love, and nothing to hope for.
It is dangerous to think you know everything if you are deceiving yourself.
It is easy to be liked if you do not continually speak magnificent truths that everybody hates.
It is easier to imagine a person is great if their behaviour does not continually remind you that you are not.
Most people find it impossible to understand a valid argument.
A cup of tea gives a wise man time to think and a fool something warm to put in his mouth.
Tea drinkers often measure their lives with tea spoons.
A man should avoid tea, women, and all other slop-kettle.
Small pleasures exclude great ones.
The fact that a man dies does not prove that he lives.
To shave is a perpetual reminder that you are a slave.
I don't mow lawns for the reason that I don't shave.
People will only stay alive if they have something important to live for - like their birthday.
You will only see the animal side of a person after knowing them for about five seconds.
It seems so calculating to remember a person's name the first or second time one hears it.
A badly dressed person may or may not be a bum, but a well dressed person is surely bad.
The way people dress reflects what they think, and it nearly always reflects nothing at all.
If a person cares for their appearance it means they are a manipulative coward. In other words, a respectable citizen well worth knowing, just like us.
I heard a young journalist say: "It is difficult to judge what is newsworthy because it is hard to determine what the public regards as news."
One is not afraid of dying tonight, but of growing old without having achieved one's goals.
Society has declined to such a degree that nowadays very few people doze-off at inopportune times.
Anyone who thinks there is some good in everyone certainly hasn't met everyone, and probably doesn't know anyone very well.
Many Christians are astounded to learn that some people still believe in evolution.
The only evidence against evolution are its opponents.
To argue with a Christian is like sparring with a dead sheep.
The practice of honesty is more convincing than the practice of religion.
There are thousands of contradictory religions; at least one of them must be wrong.
There is nothing more futile than debunking religion, the reason being that religion is not upheld because it is true, but because it is thought to be useful.
The only good thing to be learnt from religion is not to be so gullible.
If you know which writings are authentic Scripture and which are not, then you know enough to write Scripture yourself.
Goodness plus ignorance makes one Devil.
For every million who can raise the dead there's not one who knows the truth.
The road to Hell is paved with Bibles.
Even God doesn't have free will.
God may forgive you your sins, but destiny will not.
The only certain proof of the existence of God is a personal experience of Him - provided one can be sure He is not the Devil in disguise.
God is a pauper: He has nothing to believe in - no higher power - nothing. God in Heaven is irreligious, without faith, and . . . shame upon shame . . . does whatever He pleases.
To spell the word "Devil" with a lower case "d" is to underestimate Him, giving the impression that God cannot help but win, which leads to a fatal complacency.
It is said: "Even the Devil can quote Scripture." I tell you, even the Devil can write Scripture!
The best thing about Christians is that they're not serious about their religion, unlike Muslims.
The inside of a church or temple smells of dying souls - the incense of ignorance.
Christian humility: "It is not me who is saying this is true, but God. I only claim to know that God said it, and that He was right."
Priests are living proof that women should never be allowed to enter the clergy.
The monks are smiling. The Dharma is dying.
According to the Pope a woman can become a saint but not a priest.
You have a fiend in Jesus.
As thick as . . . a theologian.
I am certain there is no life after death because I have experienced it.
Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith in the value of truth.
Music appears the most innocent of passions, but no passion goes unpunished.
Masturbation is bad because it is a pleasure that is not shared with others. Marriage is bad because it too is a pleasure that is not shared with others. One's very own self is bad if it is not shared with all others.
All dogmatism is sinful.
Personal opinions are worth nothing, that's my personal opinion.
There is absolutely no absolute truth.
I despise judgemental people. There's no hope for them.
The difference between a real philosopher and a fake is that the fake has a wisp of hair neatly combed over his bald crown as if to cover it, while the real philosopher's wisp of hair is in disarray.
The more a wise man makes you laugh, and the more he cautions you to doubt him, the more suspicious you should be.
Blessed is he who has made it through University without being made a fool of.
A man is honest who reads the books he himself wrote in order to learn from someone who is more wise than himself.
We no longer read the great books of the past because it appears uncreative.
The thing I hate most about Americans is that ninety percent of them believe in God.
Sport is a great leveller, but then so is death.
Compliments are more readily believed when they are unbelievable. An element of truth in a compliment would tend to arouse feelings of guilt concerning the stretching the truth.
No man is scared of truth who never really hears it, never makes it a part of himself, never speaks it or promotes it in the world. The Devil Himself is unafraid of truth. Clearly it is not enough to be unafraid of truth - one must be disgusted with untruth. One who is only lukewarm in his feelings towards untruth has no love of truth, and is no friend of God.
The one thing out of place in any argument is reason: it is considered unrealistic.
To use reason against an opponent is a bit like trying to exhume a body from the grave with a hail of bullets. Your opponent will be totally unaware you are trying to help him.
If you can't live by philosophy alone, then die by it.
People say I have a philosophy of negation, but how can I negate what does not exist?
Things exist, they're just not there.
Science is 10,000 years behind philosophy. Theology is 10,000 years behind that.
No one ever thought to give awards for wisdom, which is a great relief.
The enlightened people of the New Age love EVERYTHING, even lies.
It is impossible not to tell the occasional lie once you conform to a normal social life . . . you feel that one more lie on top of a veritable mountain of lies will not make any difference.
It is unreasonable to try to reason with unreasonable people.
I hate people calling me wise, for when I hear that word I am forced to consider truth, my wisdom returns, and my pride vanishes.
Whoever said that imagination was strongest in youth? I have found that imagination is most strong in the elderly, who have the most to forget.
The true man is harsh because honesty is harsh. He doesn't see any reason for softness, because softness is mendacious.
Fallacy will get you everywhere.
Truth may kill a man, but he dies with dignity. And if the human race goes extinct, let it be for truth and not for the cowardice of ignorance.
When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand him. It was only when I turned twenty-one that I realized how astonishingly wise I was even back then.
My mind possesses only a fraction of one percent of all possible knowledge, but that fraction includes everything that can ever be known about God and life.
Those who have the mental clarity to see things from other people's point of view are invariably accomplished manipulators.
Nowadays a child is brought-up by everyone except his parents.
These days children bring up parents.
When you reach the age of thirty you will have forfeited the chance to make yourself into a person worth listening to - but now at last people will listen to you.
If you go against the grain when young the grain will go against you when old.
A socialist is someone who wants a slice of another person's excessive wealth. A conservative is an excessively wealthy person who doesn't want to share.
Am I a capitalist if I want to increase the intellectual and spiritual capital of mankind?
That which a person doesn't believe in enough to write in prose can be comfortably written in poetry. The reason being that poets are not held responsible for what they write and are not taken seriously, so there is no risk.
Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason before reason has done enough damage.
The trouble with poetry that rhymes is that the rhyme often dictates the meaning of the poem, or the lack of meaning more usually.
In a shameless person the writing of aphorisms can descend to the depths of poetry writing, where the words suggest themselves at least as much as does the idea behind them, and so create a new idea, which is not a genuine idea.
A good writer is one whose thought develops his writing. A bad writer is one whose writing develops his thought.
He who speaks longest goes furthest in this world.
He who asks questions excludes himself from the conversation.
A good conversation is one where you either say or hear something worth remembering.
Longevity: My body may not live long, but I will live no less than a thousand years.
Egotism is one substance with two faces - love and hatred.
If you understand that people do not care about the survival of the human race it is more easy to understand why they behave the way they do.
I am too wise to be a sage.
All pleasures cost at least the time they take.
That which is best for peoples' happiness is rarely what is best for their minds.
You can't listen to anyone younger than thirty. You can't reason with anyone older than twenty-five.
If you're going to become a monk You may as well get married.
Better unhappy and joyful Than happy and miserable.
I'm not happy to want to be happy.
Clear of conscience, clear of thought.
Combed hair despair; Clean clothes on the nose.
Two kinds of people do not blink - madmen and gods.
It is not hard to foretell wars and famines. It is impossible to stop them.
There would be no war if there were no history.
The only way to stop a war is to outlaw the truth.
Peace wets the appetite of war.
A book can get inside your mind and heart far better than any friend, so take more care in choosing your books than your friends.
All people over thirty are the same mental age.
Nobody wishes to grow older than thirty - the age at which you begin to unlearn faster than you learn.
Time heals nothing.
Nobody is intellectually honest. Sometimes people are emotionally honest, the only problem being that emotions can never be honest.
Wit is an infinite capacity for wit. Anything said in a short sentence sounds wise.
Everyone has free will, but some have more than others.
The older one gets, the more one is allowed to over-act. The elderly are excused for giving-up the fight for dignity.
Australians cut down tall poppies, which makes them almost as fair-minded as the Irish.
There is no such thing as a pessimist. One has to have an incredibly positive attitude to see the negative in everything.
Positive thinking is the triumph of negative forces.
I find that round shoulders often make a person seem taller, while those who stand tall seem small.
Confidence is the feeling you have before you know what you are setting into motion.
Money gives one the freedom to take holidays one wouldn't need if one didn't have money.
If time is money then the less you work the more wealthy you are.
What you do with your life determines what you will be as a person. This is why I do not work.
If I worked as much as others I would do as little as they.
You can never know how lazy you really are till you stop working.
Being on the dole is as dark as being in work, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
A man who has a million dollars feels as well off as if he were not a fool.
Some people gather a lot of money thinking it will make them worth more.
One should not seek to be of value to society any more than one would wish to be popular with a fool.
If I was appreciated along with other men I would depreciate myself.
The danger of success is . . . it is not.
The danger in being valued by society is that it might lead you to think that you are contributing to it.
Busy people think that a busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life.
Nobody wants to take responsibility for the survival of the human race because it would involve being unsociable.
Beware being able to do many things well, but nothing that needs doing.
One can be competent and successful without being clever. One can be competent, successful and very clever without being imaginative and original. One can be competent, successful, very clever, imaginative and original without being wise. But one cannot be wise without a courage that encompasses the Universe.
To be a success in life all you need is confidence and ignorance.
People go to a lot of trouble to create their problems and they don't appreciate you telling them a simple solution.
Nobility is a value that doesn't exist if you don't think of it.
One generally learns to express oneself well at the expense of knowledge and dignity.
It's hell living in paradise.
We realize we are in hell when we meet someone whose life is much happier and more beautiful than our own.
For a young person to have radical ideas is endearing; for a middle aged person to have them is immoral.
Some people choose to be right just for the sake of being different.
A very clever man does not need to hide his cleverness.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, truths, and statistics.
That a lie cannot endure for ever is the classic example of a lie that endures forever.
The perfectly wise never laugh, nor feel the need to laugh. But the imperfect must laugh if they will become perfect. Having said that, I am not convinced that anyone has, as yet, become perfect - I don't think we laugh seriously enough - not painfully enough. Humour only hurts when it strikes us as too true to be able to let out the whole of the laugh.
It is not important whether you are remembered when you die, but rather that you have done something worth remembering.
People no longer study for self improvement.
Tell me what you believe and I'll tell you where you're going wrong.
A bad man is judged innocent until proven guilty, and a saint is judged guilty, guilty, guilty.
We make more enemies by what we say than friends by what we do. Therefore wise men say much, be it in few words, while fools say little, very cautiously, and at great length.
If one wishes to think for a few hours of each day, one must use the remaining hours to rest-up in preparation.
I haven't read much, but what I have read I've read a lot.
Advice to spiritual men: Before you traipse off to help and encourage some wise-looking girl, consider first whether there is not some man close by of still more potential, but of less appeal.
Pretending to be extremely poor when you are actually very rich is called hypocrisy. It is also hypocrisy to pretend to be evil when you are a saint.
Cosmetics are dehumanizing. They make us look and smell cosmetic.
It is a consolation for any person to know that if he were attractive he would be liked as much as other people.
Everybody who is incapable of teaching has taken up learning.
Freedom from desire is usually but an avoidance of temptation.
Stop short of the absolute and the times of greatest hope are the best you can hope for.
A Final Word
There are two sides to my nature, the human and the superhuman, or the animal and the human, depending on how critical a stance I want to take. The contents of this book issue from my lower self, which aspires to finish itself, and are aimed at your lower self, with the aim of inflicting a mortal injury.
I would like to have related some profound spiritual insights with you, but I cannot speak to your higher spiritual self when you have none. Realistically, while there is ego one must work with ego, and only when the ego becomes utterly disgusted with itself can it die.
I hope this book has disgusted you.
Brought to you by The Thinking Man’s Minefield
ksolway@theabsolute.net