The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendor cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate.

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.

Love from blue waves

Do you thinking not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?"--Robert Redford from the 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor

I wake up in the morning with a list of problems, and I go solve them.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Do whatever you have to do to be happy.

I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published.

The question for me is whether we can keep Earth a safe, pleasant place for humankind and the ecosystems we rely on.

...Everyone had to eat, but eating people wasn't polite.

I was lucky enough to be a "type." Sort of a bad-guy type at the time, because I was tall and I had dark eyes. A lot of times, you don't have to be good; you just have to be the right type.

I'm a creative person and I use painting, acting, writing, writing songs, or whatever, as tools to just get a point across, in order to communicate a story or an emotion.