I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness, and consolidates society.

Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

We tried to act familiar, which meant we couldn't ask the kind of questions that might have helped us figure each other out and year after year the distance grew.

I believe mutual respect for one another and cooperation should be the basis for relationships with foreign nations.

Humor is my default mode.

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

Being identified as a poet in France or Denmark or India one is greeted with gracious respect.

I got sued more times than Martha Stewart.

Love is the art of hearts, and heart or arts.

It is more difficult by far to be independent of our own inner shackles than it is of the shackles that others might place upon us.

I forgot how it feel like to have the top of my foot hurt so bad from kicking people on the face.

The goal is not to simulate reality right now by going crazy. The goal is to prepare for reality by going slowly