“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”
“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.”
“Books are no more threatened by Kindle than stairs by elevators.”
“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”
"The Early Essays".
Source: Without Feathers (1975)
“Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.”
The Crock of Gold (Charleston: BiblioBazaar, [1912] 2006) p. 13.
“It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.”
Source: The Poetics of Space
“…there was no more safety to be found in love than there was to be found in a virus.”
Source: The Cider House Rules
“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.”
“Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation”
“The heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.”
“I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed.”
Source: I See You Everywhere
“This shows how much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.”
Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1860/jan/24/address-in-answer-to-her-majestys-speech in the House of Commons (24 January 1860); see also Lord Byron, "Notes to Canto II" (1812), Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: "How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct".
1860s
Variant: How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
