The duties of religion, sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt the meanest and to exercise the highest understanding.

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.

Art and disease proliferate via contagion, and similar conditions favor both.

The past must be let go before the future can be grasped.

Renewal requires opening yourself up to new ways of thinking and feeling

The world didn't end with a whimper or a bang. Your life finished in complete silence. Gone in a blink. And then there was nothing.

I need to complete my homework on time.

That's not true. I did not have sexual intercourse with Lindsay Lohan. ... A lot of people probably did, I don't know, [but I did not].

It doesn't matter what you choose, what matters is the energy with which you choose it.

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.

I've always said at the beginning of every single season of the show when I was running the show in the writers' room, "This is the last season, so let's smoke 'em if we've got 'em."

I don't use the computer. I do sketches, very quickly, often more than 100 on the same formal research.