It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid.

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.

The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.

Women, as they grow older, rely more and more on cosmetics. Men, as they grow older, rely more and more on a sense of humor.

Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.

An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.

So long as there is one pretty girl left on the stage, the professional undertakers may hold up their burial of the theater.

Love demands infinitely less than friendship.

An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out.

A man admires a woman not for what she says, but what she listens to.

Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry.

It is also said of me that I now and then contradict myself. Yes, I improve wonderfully as time goes on.

A man's wife is his compromise with the illusion of his first sweetheart.

It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid.

I know many married men, I even know a few happily married men, but I don't know one who wouldn't fall down the first open coal hole running after the first pretty girl who gave him a wink.

Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.

To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination.

I drink to make other people interesting.

Whenever a man encounters a woman in a mood he doesn't understand, he wants to know if she's tired.

Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man.

A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward.

Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value.

I have yet to find a man worth his salt in any direction who did not think of himself first and foremost.

What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency.

Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.

The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

The bachelors admired freedom is often a yoke for the freer a man is to himself the greater slave he often is to the whims of others.

Cynicism is full of naive disappointments.

Cynicism is intellectual treason.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

I am most proud of my integrity and least proud of my cynicism.

I think we too often make choices based on the safety of cynicism, and what we're lead to is a life not fully lived. Cynicism is fear, and it's worse than fear - it's active disengagement.

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.

If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign.

I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.

Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

Irony differentiates. Cynicism never does.

I have no cynicism at all.

I read some of my stories recently and thought, 'How in the hell did I get away with that?' I had some really raw cynicism in some of them.

My level of cynicism about the reasons that took us to war against Iraq remain just as well-developed as they were before I went.

In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

Hypocrisy is the outside of cynicism.

The only deadly sin I know is cynicism.

Reforming public education, cutting property taxes, fixing adult and child protective services and funding our budget can all occur when Democrats and Republicans engage in consensus and cooperation - not cynicism and combat.