Give an Irishman lager for a month and he's a dead man. An Irishman's stomach is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him.

No church property is taxed and so the infidel and the atheist and the man without religion are taxed to make up the deficit.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together, who would escape hanging? Framed in a more positive light, this tells us also that if we wish to accomplish a particular thing then we need to increase our level of desire for that thing and to create or seek out the opportunities and right environment for it to happen without fail.

It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art... Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes.

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.

You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure--because he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps;but otherwise he is just as much a human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman.

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.