But when they began handing out doctorates for comparative folk dancing and advanced fly-fishing, I became too stink in’ proud to use the title. I won’t touch watered whiskey and I take no pride in watered-down degrees.

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

Beauty is not diminished by being shared.

The nice thing about citing god as an authority is that you can prove anything you set out to prove.

Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.

The most expensive thing in the world is a second-best military establishment, good but not good enough to win.

In handling a stinging insect, move very slowly.