“A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.”

“When you have a full bouquet you can't sit back and smell each flower.”

“Have you ever seen the coyote in the desert? Watching, tuned in, completely aware. Christ on the cross, the coyote in the desert — it’s the same thing, man. The coyote is beautiful. He moves through the desert delicately, aware of everything, looking around. He hears every sound, smells every smell, sees everything that moves. He’s in a state of total paranoia, and total paranoia is total awareness.”

“The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly.”

“It was like a dream of hell, when a man finds his own name staring at him from the Devil's ledger; like a dream of death, when he who comes as mourner finds himself in the coffin, or as witness to a hanging, the condemned upon the scaffold.”

“A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.”

“He looked at her as a man might look at a faded flower he had plucked, in which it was difficult for him to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it”

“Fools will be fools,
And wise will be wise.
But I will look this world
Straight in the eyes.What good is a man
Who won't take a stand?
What good is a cynic
With no better plan?”

“Even the devil may cry when he looks around hell and realizes that he's there alone.”

“Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it…”