Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.

Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

I lost some time once. It’s always in the last place you look for it.

The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

Breed is stronger than pasture.

I think of myself as a very lazy author.

Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

Historically, more people have died of religion than cancer.

So the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for, and sometimes winning and sometimes losing, the fight for First Amendment rights in comics and, more generally, for freedom of speech.

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work, and I’d go and work my way through the children’s area.

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

I wanted to write something that would be a comedy in the sense of making people feel happier when they finish it than they did when began it.

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

I wondered to what extent people remained the same as they’d been when very young; if one peeled back the layers of living one would come to the know child.

Strategy number one is that I always, or almost always, have at least two or three different things that I’m writing at any one time.

In every parting there is an image of death.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

Also, I’ve already won all the awards.

Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.

To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.

Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn’t do to be run away with. We must keep the reins.

I was always so relieved that anyone wants to publish anything I’ve written.

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

Harold, like the rest of us, had many impressions which saved him the trouble of distinct ideas.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn’t have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria.

The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don’t have that.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.

Might, could, would – they are contemptible auxiliaries.

American Gods is about 200,000 words long, and I’m sure there are words that are simply in there ’cause I like them. I know I couldn’t justify each and every one of them.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference.

I’m not denying that women are foolish: God almighty made ’em to match the men.

I’ll agonize over sentences. Mostly because you’re trying to create specific effects with sentences, and because there are a number of different voices in the book.

Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking.

I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ’em to match the men.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

Walt Whitman, he who laid end to end words never seen in each other’s company before outside of a dictionary.