Painting is the art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic

The life of man in this world is like the life of a fly in a room filled with 100 boys, each armed with a fly swatter

The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-heap and a soul roasting in hell

Men become civilized not in proportion to their willingness to believe but in proportion to their readiness to doubt

Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another

An enchanted life has many moments when the heart is overwhelmed with beauty and the imagination is electrified by some haunting quality in the world or by a spirit or voice speaking from deep within a thing, a place, or a person. Enchantment may be

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas

You come into the world with nothing, and the purpose of your life is to make something out of nothing

The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating