I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

Groan and forget it.

A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

A big iron needle stitching the country together.

I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.

Teaching is the royal road to learning.

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.

The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate.

Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.

Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.

Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter.

If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.

The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.

You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.

The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.

If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.

We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?

It is very east to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.

In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

A broken bone can heal but the wound a word opens can fester forever.

At fourteen you dont need sickness or death for tragedy.

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

Pleasure in irony ... is an ego trip.

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.

Saddam Hussein has been tenacious in his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and, unless he is removed from power, he will eventually harm our nation and our allies. Every moment we delay allows him to grow stronger.

Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

The real harm of term extension comes not from these famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result.

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

I would rather my soul broil in hell than I do you any harm.

Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples?

Words will not be able to ever express how sorry I am for this, and I have profound regret and sorrow for the multitude of mistakes and harm I have caused.

We do as much harm holding onto programs and people past their natural life span as we do when we employ massive organizational air strikes. However, destroying comes at the end of life's cycle, not as a first response.

Some people, and I am one of them, hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm.

Whenever a doctor cannot do good, he must be kept from doing harm.

We cannot turn the clock back nor can we undo the harm caused, but we have the power to determine the future and to ensure that what happened never happens again.