Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one.

No sociologist should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time. One cannot with impunity try to transfer this task entirely to mechanical assistants if one wishes to figure something, even though the final result is often small indeed.

Max Weber

After all, the world is not a stage -- not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches... and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be. Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it -- if he wants a safe seat in the audience -- let him read someone else.

D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

Let us hold our discussion together in our own persons, making trial of the truth and of ourselves.

Protagoras

'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Let's not overlook, though, what we do know about the campaign finance scandal, and the fact the Chinese were involved in our presidential campaign and our congressional campaigns.

Fred Thompson

All these jokes have been pre-approved as funny by me.

Mitch Hedberg

A civilization in which there is not a continuous controversy about important issues is on the way to totalitarianism and death.

Robert Maynard Hutchins

When anything goes, it's women who lose.

Camille Anna Paglia

Cheerfulness in most cheerful people, is the rich and satisfying result of strenuous discipline.

Edwin P. Whipple

Where there is no extravagance there is no love, and where there is no love there is no understanding.

Oscar Wilde

Everything that seems imperishable tends to extinguishment.

Marcel Proust

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.

E. M. Forster