To exercise power costs effort and demands courage. That is why so many fail to assert rights to which they are perfectly entitled - because a right is a kind of power but they are too lazy or too cowardly to exercise it. The virtues which cloak these faults are called patience and forbearance.

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

He hadn’t a single redeeming vice.

To be entirely free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Life is like a box of terrible analogies.

Finding the meaning of life is easy. Simply get a dictionary, go to the 'L' section, and find the word 'life.'