If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.

The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.

Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.

It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

Nothing is sadder than the consequences of having worldly standards without worldly means.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.

The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.

The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an Orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them.

I done something bad, it was to believe that to read a book you must be a stupid guy. No people which read they are clever - the guy who said this is stupid guy!

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

I think it will be found that experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth.

People talk about me because I am a great man

I was the youngest kid. When I was five, my sisters were 17, 19, and 21, already becoming women. I would see how different they would be around one another and around men, even my father.

I've been known to write on the Underground in London and on the subway in New York. I have two or three cafes in Paris that I go into. I find a corner with a little shade, and I can work.

[Jeffrey Lewis is] The best lyricist working in the US today.

Reality and love are almost contradictory for me.

Because you are human, you do have magic. Get in touch with it. When you feel the insanity rising, don't push it down. Let it come out. Just once-and then let me know what happens!

What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war.