Anybody who has the courage to raise his eyes and look sanely at the awful human condition ... must realize finally that tiny periods of temporary release from intolerable suffering is the most that any individual has the right to expect.

The dusk was performing its customary intransitive operation of "gathering".

Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.

I mean to say, whether a yarn is tall or small I like to hear it well told. I like to meet a man that can take in hand to tell a story and not make a balls of it while he's at it. I like to know where I am, do you know. Everything has a beginning and an end.

A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let's emulate that wise old bird.

After a time," said old Mathers disregarding me, "I mercifully perceived the errors of my ways and the unhappy destination I would reach unless I mended them. I retired from the world in order to try to comprehend it and to find out why it becomes more unsavoury as the years accumulate on a man's body. What do you think I discovered at the end of my meditations?" I felt pleased again. He was now questioning me. "What?" "That No is a better word than Yes," he replied.

The only result my father got for his money was the certainty that his son had laid faultlessly the foundation of a system of heavy drinking and could be always relied upon to make a break of at least twenty-five even with a bad cue.