When I take up my pen, nothing can happen to me. Fate, remember that.

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

Beware how you take away hope from another human being

A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. There is something about a well-worded question that often penetrates to the heart of the matter and triggers new ideas and insights.

Man is happy only as he finds work worth doing - and does it well

Whoever had the bright idea of putting Indiana Jones in a leather jacket and a fedora in the jungle ought to be dragged into the street and shot.

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

There's nothing trite about being consoled in a world that does everything in its power to deliver sorrow.

Those who advice the ruler on the Way, do not want the world subdued with weapons.

This is not a museum of tragedy. It is not the museum of difficult moments. It is the museum that says -here is a balanced history of America that allows us to cry and smile.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.