All is vanity, and discovering it - the greatest vanity.

Disillusions all come from within ... from the failure of some dear and secret hope. The world makes no promises; we only dream it does; and when we wake, we cry!

Men heap together the mistakes of their lives, and create a monster they call Destiny.

Those who have made unhappy marriages walk on stilts, while the happy ones are on a level with the crowd. No one sees 'em!

A statesman's words, like butcher's meat, should be well weighed.

Women may be whole oceans deeper than we are, but they are also a whole paradise better. She may have got us out of Eden, but as a compensation she makes the earth very pleasant.

A quart of doubt to an ounce of truth is the safest brew.

We must know the measure of a man's desires before we can sound the depth of his regrets.

People get to like a soul, but a satisfactory hat makes an impression at first sight.

All forced virtue is degrading in it effect.

love comes to man through his senses - to woman through her imagination.

Your happiness is my happiness.

Wealth is commonplace but wisdom is rare. I beg you to remember that wealth without wisdom can often end in disaster.

Presidents have to be very organized to govern successfully, and solo artists rarely succeed.

This generation, raised on "Eyewitness News," conditioned by the instant replay, and spared the illumination that comes from tedious historical study, tends to be even more ahistorical than most.

I am an author, and like many in my profession, I am also a traveling salesman, going all over in an attempt to persuade people to spend twenty-five dollars on a hardcover book by me.

Sound is more than just noise. Ordered sound is music. My life is music.

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it.

We are all united by the phenomenon that we have a body and that body is universally the same, more or less. If we lose sight of that perspective, everything can desperately suffer.

Many books today suggest that the mass of women lead lives of noisy desperation.

You can't create a work without being aware that it will change dependent upon the context or the society where it is developed or consumed.