Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope without friends without books even without music as long as he can listen to his own thoughts.

I'm always amazed when a pitcher becomes angry at a hitter for hitting a home run off him. When I strike out I don't get angry at the pitcher I get angry at myself. I would think that if a pitcher threw up a home run ball he should be angry at himself.

A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher but he who goes from country to country guided by the blind impulse of curiosity is a vagabond.

No man can call himself liberal or radical or even a conservative advocate of fair play if his work depends in any way on the unpaid or underpaid labor of women at home or in the office.

Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.

Our liberal New York/Washington-based media would never in a million years put Liberal Godfather Ted Kennedy on the spot about his clan's bad behavior to whose lurid history he himself has contributed so much.

A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic a mere working mason if he possesses some knowledge of these he may venture to call himself an architect.

Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?

It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself who care little for his pursuits and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.

Since therefore no man is born without faults and he is esteemed the best whose errors are the least let the wise man consider everything human as connected with himself for in worldly affairs there is no perfect happiness under heaven.

Fancy the happiness of Pinocchio on finding himself free! Without saying yes or no he fled from the city and set out on the road that was to take him back to the house of the lovely Fairy.

My biography of Frank Sinatra is not paean to his music but rather an illumination of the man behind the music who once described himself as 'an 18-karat manic-depressive who lived a life of violent emotional contradictions with an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as happiness.'

The sum of the whole is plainly this: The nature of man considered in his single capacity and with respect only to the present world is adapted and leads him to attain the greatest happiness he can for himself in the present world.

Each person is living for himself his own happiness is all he can ever personally feel.

Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.