Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

In violence, we forget who we are.

The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader, but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero.

Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.

Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man.

We are the hero of our own story.

I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you're older, I think, is that you really must make the self.

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the brother of talk after dinner.

Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret.

Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a "work" of man.

When an American heiress wants to buy a man, she at once crosses the Atlantic. The only really materialistic people I have ever met have been Europeans.

Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.

The labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.

I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets.

I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.

People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

Life for the European is a career; for the American it is a hazard.

If someone tells you he is going to make a "realistic decision," you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

You musn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.

We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.

If someone tells you he is going to make a 'realistic decision', you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad.

Labor is work that leaves no trace behind it when it is finished, or if it does, as in the case of the tilled field, this product of human activity requires still more labor, incessant, tireless labor, to maintain its identity as a 'work' of man.

Spry is not a look, spry is behavior.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

The civilizing process has increased the distance between behavior and the impulse life of the animal body.

Beauty set up distance between other people and me. It warped their behavior.

I try as best I can to enter the realm of nuances of human behavior.

I'm always looking, as an actor, for activities. I think it's far more interesting to watch what people do than what they say. You always want to watch behavior, because the dialogue as written by our illustrious leaders is great. Eminently playable.

The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs.

No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.

You can't legislate or litigate good, healthy behavior but we must be willing to educate people at an early age about the affects of unhealthy living.

The orbs create feedback loops that can influence either personal of employee behavior.

Many working mothers feel guilty about not being at home. And when they are there, they wish it could be perfect. This pressure to make every minute happy puts working parents in a bind when it comes to setting limits and modifying behavior.

You were saying that once when visiting Yale, you were struck that unlike Pound, Williams's thinking was volatile, I mean, did not stay locked into a pattern of concepts that then defined his subsequent necessary behavior, whereas Pound did.

We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology , their behavior under external conditions, their mode of generation, and the whole course of their life.

I have always had school sickness, as others have seasickness. I cried when it was time to go back to school long after I was old enough to be ashamed of such behavior.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

I always say centered food equals centered behavior.

Perhaps it is because cats do not live by human patterns, do not fit themselves into prescribed behavior, that they are so united to creative people.

I like analyzing human behavior. It's complex. That's what keeps me going.

It's better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you'll drift in that direction.

But you can't show some far off idyllic conception of behavior if you want the kids to come and see the picture. You've got to show what it's really like, and try to reach them on their own grounds.