A strong foe is better than a weak friend.

A strong foe is better than a weak friend.

The ancients understood the regulation of power better than the regulation of liberty.

The Americans have always been food, sex, and spirit revivalists.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

The machine has had a pernicious effect upon virtue, pity, and love, and young men used to machines which induce inertia, and fear, are near impotent.

When one realizes that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels.

Every decision you make is a mistake.

Always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. Walt Disney Every decision you make is a mistake.

What most men desire is a virgin who is a whore.

The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature.

Men are mad most of their lives; few live sane, fewer die so. The acts of people are baffling unless we realize that their wits are disordered. Man is driven to justice by his lunacy.

Man hoards himself when he has nothing to give away.

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.

Nothing in our times has become so unattractive as virtue.

Genius, like truth, has a shabby and neglected mien.

We can only write well about our sins because it is too difficult to recall a virtuous act or even whether it was the result of good or evil motives.

It takes a long time to understand nothing.

Ambition is a Dead Sea fruit, and the greatest peril to the soul is that one is likely to get precisely what he is seeking.

To write is a humiliation.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

We cannot live, suffer or die for somebody else, for suffering is too precious to be shared.

A man who can be entertaining for a full day will be in his grave by night fall.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Depending on what day of the week it is and what time of the month it is, I'm a good friend or not a good friend. I'm more or less a good mom or not a good mom, more or less a good mate or not a good mate. That's just life, whether or not you're public.

In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend.

My desk, most loyal friend thank you. You've been with me on every road I've taken. My scar and my protection.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

That friend a great man's ruin strongly checks, who rails into his belief all his defects.

The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.

The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; To cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

Every murderer is probably somebody's old friend.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.

I have a friend in New York who's a stylist and I went over to her place because she's got a lot of clothes. I basically ended up wearing most of it. So it's all stuff that I brought over.

A few nights ago I went to a Hollywood screening of a small independent film made by Sally Kirkland, an old friend of mine who also did terrific job acting in it. There were other actors in it and they were all terrific.

Wine is a turncoat; first a friend and then an enemy.

This friend of mine said he was surprised to find that - I don't think it's quite a majority - a bigger percentage of actors are introverts than extroverts. It was a big surprise to him. Now, I know me, and I'll do anything if I'm playing a character. Or anything that's true to the character, anyway. But in real life I'm a little more withdrawn.

Banks have a new image. Now you have 'a friend,' your friendly banker. If the banks are so friendly, how come they chain down the pens?

I usually try on at least 20 pairs of jeans before I find something that looks good on me. And even then, I have a trustworthy friend tell me if my butt looks big!

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy.

A true friend stabs you in the front.

You learn in this business: It you want a friend, get a dog.

Although Ronald Reagan was somebody I disagreed with on most ideological things, he was a friend of mine, and he was a very, very likable man. Ronald Reagan, for instance, was maybe more able to get the very rich to do the right thing sometimes.