Emotions and Feelings

A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment, anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held itin my hand. I was trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

In the matter of intellect the ant must bea strangely overrated bird. During manysummers, now, I have watched him, whenI ought to have been in better business, andI have not yet come across a living ant thatseemed to have any more sense than a deadone. I refer to the ordinary ant, of course; I have had no experience of those wonderfulSwiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute about religion.

The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by abell; she gits up by a bell—everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucketof whitewash and a long-handled brush. Hesurveyed the fence, and all gladness left himand a deep melancholy settled down upon hisspirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feethigh. Life to him seemed hollow, and existencebut a burden.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucketof whitewash and a long-handled brush. Hesurveyed the fence, and all gladness left himand a deep melancholy settled down upon hisspirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feethigh. Life to him seemed hollow, and existencebut a burden.

To do something, say something, seesomething, before anybody else—these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

Having looked the past in the eye, having asked for forgiveness and having made amends, letus shut the door on the past—not in order to forget it but in order not to allow it to imprison us.

I’ve just read your lousy review [of a concert by Truman’s daughter, Margaret]. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.” It seems to me that you are afrustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppycock as was in the back section of the paperyou work for it shows conclusively that you’reoff the beam and at least four of your ulcersare at work. Some day I hope to meet you.When that happens you’ll need a new nose, alot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps asupporter below!

Democratic nations care but little for whathas been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure. . . . Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

He knows all about art, but he doesn’t knowwhat he likes.

Then, with that faint fleeting smile playingabout his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

Then, with that faint fleeting smile playingabout his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty, the undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

I hear many condemn these men because theywere so few. When were the good and the braveever in a majority?

The mass of men lead lives of quietdesperation. What is called resignation isconfirmed desperation.

The mass of men lead lives of quietdesperation. What is called resignation isconfirmed desperation.

It is Nixon himself who represents thatdark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

We were somewhere around Barstow on theedge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

[ Of the Irish Republican Army bombing inBrighton intended to assassinate her :] This was the day I was meant not to see.

[ On the reconquest of South Georgia in the Falklands War :] Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the Marines. Rejoice!

We know we can do it—we haven’t lost the ability. That is the Falklands Factor.

They’ve [the Labor Government] got the usual Socialist disease—they’ve run out of other people’s money.

Much wished, hoped little, and demanded nought.