The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.

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.

Always have a list of what you want to achieve in life

Only the rich can get justice, only the poor cannot escape it.

Reading is seeing by proxy.

For you are abstract, making no mistake, slurring no word in the rhythm you make, the poem, writ in the air.

People ask me, "What would you be doing without baseball?" I don't know... super-sizing fries?

My writing is a process of rewriting, of going back and changing and filling in. in the rewriting process you discover what's going on, and you go back and bring it up to that point.

When Love runs through the front door fear runs out the back.

When power replaces truth as the goal, assertion replaces reason as the path

The only time I've been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979.