I felt it was my duty to praise all of God's works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest.
Every man is in his own person the whole human race without a detail lacking....I knew I should not find in any philosophy a single thought which had not passed through my own head, nor a single thought which had not passed through the heads of millions and millions of men before I was born.
All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.
You cannot have all chiefs; you gotta have Indians too.
Perfect love cannot be without equality.
A friend to everybody and to nobody is the same thing.
We are all alike, on the inside.
I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage.
There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals. France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.
By "trampling upon the helpless abroad" with unchecked surveillance, Americans have learned, "by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home."
Was it my conspicuousness that distressed me? Not at all. It was merely that I was not beautifully conspicuous but uglily conspicuous - it makes all the difference in the world.