Advertising ... is a parasitic activity; it forces goods for which there is no real need or demand on a foolish or even a reluctant public, always by appealing to their lower instincts.

The full life depends, not on the range of experience but on the intensity of the interest, the emotion involved, and on its being a personal interest.

I do disapprove of the modern attitude that you can't do the simplest thing, like dying or being born, in your own house.

we should be careful not to let machinery swamp life. That we should be sure, when we are confronted with a fresh mechanical contrivance, that we are not losing more than we gain by adopting it.

advertising confuses values ... By appealing either to fear, or to vanity, or to covetousness, it very skillfully insinuates false values.

As soon as you start asking what education is for, what the use of it is, you're abandoning the basic assumption of any true culture, that education is worth while for its own sake.

do get over the idea that size has any value or merit. It is the enemy of most of the best things in the world - it is the enemy of the good life.

Mountains had taken the place of religion, had satisfied her religious sense, her need for adoration and worship as no service in any Cathedral, however sublime, had been able to do.

the essence of vulgarity seemed to lie in the pretence at being or the attempt to be, something that one really was not, with the resulting lack of ease and dignity and taste.

What I find most injurious to mankind in modern advertising is the constant appeal to material standards and values, the elevating of material things into an end in themselves, a virtue.

If you want to feel the sunshine, change position!

For others to be generous it requires that a person accept their generosity for the cycle to be completed.

Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name

I like aristocracy. I like the beauty of aristocracy. I like the hierarchical feeling.

As long as i live i will have control over my being

I feel like I've gotten to a point where I don't know if it can get much bigger. I've been climbing and I feel very happy.

Yesterday in Florida, President Obama kissed a woman on the cheek after she told him he looks good. Which explains why last night, Michelle made him sleep on Air Mattress One.

Those whose suffering is due to love are, as we say of certain invalids, their own physicians.

Beauty makes us more like ourselves and more like each other.

My wife's so dumb, she got a nail in the spare!!