34 quotes
No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law. Nor does he feel guilt over breaking it. He simply follows the Eleventh Commandment.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
What he did have was a loud voice and no respect for tyrants. Tyrants hate people like that.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
No, I did not decide I was in love with him, after all. Enough men had had me by then that I was not inclined to mistake a hearty orgasm for eternal love.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
Now look carefully at what I said. I said that I know that these things are asserted. I did not say that they are true.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
Leave it to “worthy causes”? That is thin gruel, my friend. Most of such money is sopped up by administration, i.e., eaten by parasites.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
“How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.”
“Really?”
“That’s straight out of the Bible; you can look it up.”
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
Father had told me, “Widows are far better than brides. They don’t tell, they won’t yell, they don’t swell, they rarely smell, and they’re grateful as hell.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
And for the first time both of us were bare all over and it was wonderful and I knew that all my life had just been preparation for this moment.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
We take just one vow, to safeguard the welfare and happiness of all our children.
That’s our total marriage contract. The rest is just poetic ritual.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
Father always required me to think for myself, and Mr. Clemens urged me to, also. I was taught that the one Unforgivable Sin, the offense against one’s own integrity, was to accept anything at all simply on authority.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
Professor Huxley introduced me to the fact that [[theology] is a study with no answers because it has no subject matter.
No subject matter? That’s right, no subject matter whatever—just colored water with artificial sweetening.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
“Spare the rod and spoil the child” is not sadistic; it is hard common sense. You fail your children worst if you do not punish them when they need it. The lessons you fail to teach them will be taught later and much more harshly by a cruel world, the real world where no excuses are accepted.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
I am not running down contraception; it’s the greatest boon to women in all history, as efficient contraception frees women from that automatic enslavement to men that has been the norm through all histories. But the ancient structure of our female nervous systems is not tuned to contraception; it is tuned to getting pregnant.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)
Long ago Mr. Clemens demonstrated in his essay “What is man?” that every one of us acts at all times in his own interest. Once you understand this, it offers a way to negotiate with an antagonist in order to find means to cooperate with him for mutual benefit. But if you are convinced of your own “altruism” and you try to shame him out of his horrid selfishness, you will get nowhere.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset (1987)