Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do sowould I?

What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.

The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.

But I, in the chilling twilight stand and wait At the portcullis, at thy castle gate, Longing to see the charmed door of dreams Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!

What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?

Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West; the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.

I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings.

The secret of being a successful writer is--write. Every writer deserves that chance.

The battle is always the same, just with different chapters.

Making people laugh is what I've been doing since I was like four or five years old. I still have a lust, I still have a passion. I don't care about how I look, I'm dedicated to the laughs.

The people who are filing for bankruptcy in increasing numbers every year, it's not the poorest. It's not the people at the economic fringes. It's people who worked hard and played by the rules.

I wish that real estate were cheaper and clothes were more expensive.

It seems to be my mission in life to wait on a dog.

Again, as egotistical as I am, as self-centered as I am, and as much as I love strangers idolizing me, I find it very crass to be self-promoter in a way.

An annibabtist is a thing I am not a member of.

Aphorisms are not true or false, but pointed or flat.