The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere; it is not this sort of licence that distinguishes New York. It is, rather, a lust of the total ego for recognition, even for eminence. More than elsewhere, everybody here wants to be Somebody.
Many persons of high intelligence have notoriously poor judgement.
There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site.
Ninety percent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves.
The generality of mankind is lazy. What distinguishes men of genuine achievement from the rest of us is not so much their intellectual powers and aptitudes as their curiosity, their energy, their fullest use of their potentialities. Nobody really knows how smart or talented he is until he finds the incentives to use himself to the fullest. God has given us more than we know what to do with.
The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.
The most important thing in an argument, next to being right, is to leave an escape hatch for your opponent, so that he can gracefully swing over to your side without too much apparent loss of face.
Intolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting.
Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves - so how can we know anyone else?
Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.
Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men.
An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
When you run into someone who is disagreeable to others, you may be sure he is uncomfortable with himself; the amount of pain we inflict upon others is directly proportional to the amount we feel within us.
Sometimes the best, and only effective, way to kill an idea is to put it into practice.
Somebody who never got over the embarrassing fact that he was born in bed with a lady.
The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.
A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.
The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.
