128 Quotes by Peter De Vries

Do you believe in astrology? -I don’t even believe in astronomy.

It might even be said one pulls himself together to disintegrate. The scattered particles of self – love, wood thrush calling, homework sums, broken nerves, rag dolls, one Phi Betta Kappa key, gold stars, lamplight smiles, night cries, and the shambles of contemplation – are collected for a split moment like scraps of shrapnel before they explode.

So we were back in the Children’s Pavilion, and there was again the familiar scene: the mothers with their nearly dead, the false face of mercy, the Slaughter of the Innocents.

Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff – it is a palliative rather than a remedy.

What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial – or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.

Rather than waste precious time arguing, I went up and started serving my “sentence” without delay. It was usually about an hour for epigrams; somewhat longer for a paradox.

Everybody hates me because I’m so universally liked.

We must love one another, yes, yes, that’s all true enough, but nothing says we have to like each other. It may be the very recognition of all men as our brothers that accounts for the sibling rivalry, and even enmity, we have toward so many of them.

Anyone informed that the universe is expanding and contracting in pulsations of eighty billion years has a right to ask. What’s in it for me?