James Gould Cozzens Quotes

In the present, every day is a miracle.

When you can, always advise people to do what you see they really want to do. Doing what they want to do, they may succeed; doing what they don't want to do, they won't

A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset. Yes, there'll be more war ; and soon, I don't doubt. There always has been. There'll be deaths and disappointments and failures. When they come, you meet them.

There never could be a man so brave that he would not sometime, or in the end, turn part or all coward; or so wise that he was not, from beginning to end, part ass if you knew where to look; or so good that nothing at all about him was despicable.

The innocent supposition, entertained by most people, that even if they are not brilliant, they are not dumb, is correct only in a very relative sense.

Be virtuous and you'll be happy Nonsense Be happy and you'll begin to be virtuous.

Real rebels are rarely anything but second rate outside their rebellion; the drain of time and temper is ruinous to any other accomplishment.

Bailey might not have great intelligence or abilities, but his whole aim, thought and study was that of the born leader--to look out for himself; and he did it with that born-leader's confidence and intensity that draws along the ordinary uncertain man, who soon confuses his own interest and his own safety with that of the leader.

The first test of ability and intelligence is to find a field of endeavor in which profits are large and risks small.

I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up.

A cynic is just a man who found out when he was ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset.

Because in fact I only lived to write, see no sense in life, have only forced "interests," wish every night, not urgently but quite definitely I could just not wake up tomorrow.

I meditate and put on a rubber tire with three bottles of beer. Most of the time I just sit picking my nose and thinking.