“Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one's mind, or to define oneself — there is no wish I make more often.”

“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.”

“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.”

“perhaps, if one wishes to remain an individual in the midst of the teeming multitudes, one must make oneself grotesque.”

“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”

“And so I continue in borderline poverty, save for my one indulgence, no, my single absolute necessity: I take cabs. Yes, on occasion, when I wish to see what people with unpleasant skin conditions are wearing, I do take the subway. I have never, I am proud to say, taken the bus, because people who take the bus have given up.”

“Moral influence means persuading another that one can make that other more uncomfortable than that other can make oneself.”

“I have endeavour'd to make every thing so plain, that a very little Skill in Geometry may be sufficient to enable one to read this Book by himself. And upon this occasion I would advise all my Readers, who desire to make themselves Masters of this Subject, not to be contented with the Schemes they find here; but upon every Occasion to draw new ones of their own, in all the Variety of Circumstances they can think of. This will take up a little more Time at first; but in a little while they will find the vast Benefit of it, by the extensive Notions it will give them of the Nature of these Principles.”

“He never complained. He seemed to have no instinct for the making much of oneself that complaining requires.”

“The time to make up your mind about people, is never.”