In New York if you weigh under 200 pounds and decline so much as a cookie at a co-worker's party women will flock to your side assuring you of your appealing physique. This is how skittish we are about the dangers of anorexia and the pressures of body image.

Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

There's evidence of a social decline in direct proportion to technology and the industrialization of the motion picture industry.

For much of this decade both Congressional and administration budget projections showed a decline in science and technology accounts of between 20 and 30 percent in real dollars. The real impact to date has been far less severe.

It's kind of ironic that the two sports with the greatest characters boxing and horse racing have both been on the decline. In both cases it's for the lack of a suitable hero.

Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing.

I do feel like I have always in my life been inclined to be on the outside walk a different path or something. Because of that and increasingly over the years my sense of distance from mainstream society or from the way culture works I have a different kind of perception of it.

One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage.

Apart from the fact that your physical ability starts to decline I also think someone in their fifties being childlike becomes a little sad. You've got to be careful.

All respect for the office of the presidency aside I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review spoke for itself.

The more powerful and original a mind the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.

As civilization advances poetry almost necessarily declines.

England has always been disinclined to accept human nature.

Maybe I'm genetically more inclined to music - but the music I make is so far removed from Indian classical music. I grew up in Texas!

Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable.

Our American friends offer us money arms and advice. We take the money we take the arms and we decline the advice.

If our soldiers are not overburdened with money it is not because they have a distaste for riches if their lives are not unduly long it is not because they are disinclined to longevity.

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

There is no doubt that as a society we have become blase about the importance of marriage as a stabilising influence and less inclined to prize it as a worthwhile institution.

Love to faults is always blind always is to joy inclined. Lawless winged and unconfined and breaks all chains from every mind.

When Honor's sun declines and Wealth takes wings Then Learning shines the best of precious things.