To undermine a principle, profess fealty to it while insisting that every applicable case is a unique circumstance that dictates its temporary suspension.
Jan 112022
Lying
To a quite unwreckable Lie,
To a most impeccable Lie!
To a water-tight, fire-proof, angle-iron, sunk-hinge, time-lock, steel-faced Lie!
Not a private hansom Lie,
But a pair-and-brougham Lie,
Not a little-place-at-Tooting, but a country-house-with-shooting
And a ring-fence-deer-park Lie.
—-Kipling
Dec 152021
The shorter you write, the less you lie.
Oct 122021
The trouble with reading the news is that you start to believe it.
Jun 022021
Intellect is scorned in all times and places, and usually protects itself by traveling incognito. Physical beauty is apparent to all, and where it is attacked, invariably in the guise of a celebration of ugliness, we find an especially deformed and vicious age.
Apr 122021
Your friends will generally put up with whatever hideous thing you say to them, as long as it isn’t true.
Mar 092021
There will always be witches, because there will always be witch-hunters to supply them.
Feb 112021
Don’t take this the right way.
Jan 292021
Humans, though naturally curious, are also highly trainable, and when we are punished often enough for noticing something we will eventually refrain.
Jan 042021
When the numbers don’t come out as you would like, the first resort is to change the way you count; the second is to stop counting.
Dec 012020
The habitual liar suffers most for his spasms of honesty.