Filth is always a sign of weakness - in the mouth of the user and in the mind of the writer.

As long as there are human beings, there will be the idea of brotherhood -- and an almost total inability to practice it.

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.

The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother - which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.

A famously wise old man in a village was once asked how he came by his wisdom. "I got it from my good judgment," he answered. And where did his good judgment come from? "I got it from my bad judgment."

The real heretic is not the atheist or agnostic (who are often decent people) but those who murmur "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as it makes you feel good." This turns religion into a subjective matter, like taste in furnishings, and robs theology of its claim to ultimate truth.