«At a turbulent public meeting once I lost my temper and said some harsh and sarcastic things. The proposal I was supporting was promptly defeated. My father who was there, said nothing, but that night, on my pillow I found a marked passage from Aristotle: Anybody can become angry--that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way -- that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.»

«Hollywood, to hear some writers tell it, is the place where they take an author's steak tartare and make cheeseburger out of it. Upon seeing the film, they say, the author promptly cuts his throat, bleeding to death in a pool of money.»

«Ephemerality is the little magazine's generic fate; by promptly dying it gives proof that it remained loyal to its first program.»

«Decide promptly, but never give any reasons. Your decisions may be right, but your reasons are sure to be wrong.»

«A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.»

«America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.»

«Danger - if you meet it promptly and without flinching - you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!»

«I broke in with four hits and the writers promptly declared they had seen the new Ty Cobb. It took me only a few days to correct that impression.»

«Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bog-gglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'`Oh dear,' says God, `I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.`Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and getshimself killed on the next zebra crossing.»

«If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall long be surprised to find out how little remains that we cannot do»