A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant."
--Wilson Mizner
"A fellow who is always declaring he's no fool usually has his suspicions."
--Wilson Mizner
"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something."
--Wilson Mizner
"A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while, he knows something."
--Wilson Mizner
"A slave has but one master. An ambition man, has as many as there are people who helped him get his fortune."
--Wilson Mizner
"All anger is not sinful, because some degree of it, and on some occasions, is inevitable. But it becomes sinful and contradicts the rule of Scripture when it is conceived upon slight and inadequate provocation, and when it continues long."
--Wilson Mizner
"Always be nice to people on the way up; because you'll meet the same people on the way down."
--Wilson Mizner
"Be nice to people on the way up, because you'll meet them on your way down."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Behavior
"Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down."
--Wilson Mizner
"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
--Wilson Mizner
"Do not be desirous of having things done quickly. Do not look at small advantages. Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished."
--Wilson Mizner
"Don't talk about yourself; it will be done when you leave."
--Wilson Mizner
"Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something."
--Wilson Mizner
"God help those who do not help themselves."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Laughter
"I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Doubt
"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education."
--Wilson Mizner
"I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Heroes / Heroism
"I still think the movie heroes are in the audience."
--Wilson Mizner
"If you count all your assets you always show a profit."
--Wilson Mizner
"If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research."
--Wilson Mizner
"It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Thought
"I've known countless people who were reservoirs of learning, yet never had a thought."
--Wilson Mizner
"I've spent several years in Hollywood, and I still think the movie heroes are in the audience."
--Wilson Mizner
"Life's a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Popularity
"Popularity is exhausting. The life of the party almost always winds up in a corner with an overcoat over him."
--Wilson Mizner
"Some of the greatest love affairs I've known have involved one actor, unassisted."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Friendship
"The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Success
"The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn't been asleep."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Greed
"The most pitiful human ailment is a birdseed heart."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Temper
"The worst-tempered people I've ever met were people who knew they were wrong."
--Wilson Mizner
Topic: Wealth
"There's nothing so comfortable as a small bankroll. A big one is always in danger."
--Wilson Mizner
"Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up."
--Wilson Mizner
"To my embarrassment I was born in bed with a lady."
--Wilson Mizner
"To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it."
--Wilson Mizner
"When you take stuff from one writer it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it's research."
--Wilson Mizner
"You sparkle with larceny."
--Wilson Mizner
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband."
--Michel De Montaigne
"A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Ambition is not a vice of little people."
--Michel De Montaigne
"An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Confidence in the goodness of another is good proof of one's own goodness."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Courtesy
"Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is ... opening a door thatwe may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Covetousness is both the beginning and the end of the devil's alphabet - the first vice in corrupt nature that moves, and the last which dies."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behavior, attire, grace, learning and all their words azimuth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Even on the highest throne in the world, we are still sitting on our ass."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Success
"Even on the most exalted throne in the world we are only sitting on our own bottom."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Memory
"Experience teaches that a strong memory is generally joined to a weak judgment."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be."
--Michel De Montaigne
"For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Fortune, seeing that she could not make fools wise, has made them lucky."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Hath God obliged himself not to exceed the bounds of our knowledge?"
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Argument And Debate
"He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak."
--Michel De Montaigne
"He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears."
--Michel De Montaigne
"He who is not very strong in memory should not meddle with lying."
--Michel De Montaigne
"How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables."
--Michel De Montaigne
"I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself."
--Michel De Montaigne
"I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Hypocrisy
"I despise the pleasure of pleasing people whom I despise."
--Michel De Montaigne
"I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie."
--Michel De Montaigne
"I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better."
--Michel De Montaigne
"I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of."
--Michel De Montaigne
"I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly."
--Michel De Montaigne
"I quote others only in order the better to express myself."
--Michel De Montaigne
"I will follow the right side even to the fire, but excluding the fire if I can."
--Michel De Montaigne
"If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I."
--Michel De Montaigne
"If a man urge me to tell wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself."
--Michel De Montaigne
"If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it."
--Michel De Montaigne
"If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Ignorance
"Ignorance is the mother of all evils."
--Michel De Montaigne
"In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum."
--Michel De Montaigne
"It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others."
--Michel De Montaigne
"It is not death, it is dying that alarms me."
--Michel De Montaigne
"It is the mind that maketh good or ill, That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Labour not after riches first, and think thou afterwards wilt enjoy them. He who neglecteth the present moment, throweth away all that he hath. As the arrow passeth through the heart, while the warrior knew not that it was coming; so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance."
--Michel De Montaigne
"My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened."
--Michel De Montaigne
"My trade and art is to live."
--Michel De Montaigne
"No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately."
--Michel De Montaigne
"No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Not being able to govern events, I govern myself."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Belief
"Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Indifference
"Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul."
--Michel De Montaigne
"One may be humble out of pride."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The entire lower world was created in the likeness of the higher world. All that exists in the higher world appears like an image in this lower world; yet all this is but One."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Joy
"The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The public weal requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The thing I fear most is fear."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The world is all a carcass and vanity, The shadow of a shadow, a play And in one word, just nothing."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The world is but a perpetual see-saw."
--Michel De Montaigne
"The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Defeat
"There are some defeats more triumphant than victories."
--Michel De Montaigne
"There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Ignorance
"There is an ABC ignorance which precedes knowledge and a doctoral ignorance which comes after it."
--Michel De Montaigne
"There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others."
--Michel De Montaigne
"There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom."
--Michel De Montaigne
Topic: Argument And Debate
"There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees."
--Michel De Montaigne
"There is no passion so contagious as that of fear."
--Michel De Montaigne
"There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to."
--Michel De Montaigne
"There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Those who compared our life to a dream were right... We sleeping wake, and waking sleep."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... We sleeping wake, and waking sleep."
--Michel De Montaigne
"'Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures."
--Michel De Montaigne
"Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul."
--Michel De Montaigne
"We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom."
--Michel De Montaigne
"We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void."
--Michel De Montaigne
"When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind."
--Michel De Montaigne
"When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her."
--Michel De Montaigne
