Joseph Heller Quotes

We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has.

Become dust - and they will throw thee in the air; Become stone - and they will throw thee on glass.

A people cannot be happy or prosperous or respected if the state to which they belong is not strong and respected …. It is the interest of the people that their state shall be powerful and respected.

Strength is life, Weakness is death.

America is coming about, and it's coming back, and it's roaring and you can hear it. It's going to be bigger and better. It is going to be. It is going to be. Remember. And it's roaring. It's going to be bigger, and better, and stronger than ever before.

Death is strong, but Life is stronger.

Broken china lasts longer than unbroken.

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.

I try to build the things so that they're fairly indestructible. I've learned from my mistakes and some of those units, even if human life disappears from the planet, will still be recognizable a thousand years from now abandoned somewhere in the woods.

That mortal is a fool who, prospering, thinks his life has any strong foundation; since our fortune's course of action is the reeling way a madman takes, and no one person is ever happy all the time.

I've told you before and I'll tell you again. The strong survive and the weak disappear. We do not intend to disappear.

Life is a frail moth flying Caught in the web of the years that pass.

And he who lives a hundred years, idle and weak, a life of one day is better if a man has attained firm strength.

I'm not saying that everything is survivable. Just that everything except the last thing is.

If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is four thousand, six hundred million years old. It could end in an afternoon.

Listen to me: die after me, all right? I don't care what else you do, where you go, how you screw up your life, just... survive. Outlive me, please.

People die', she says. 'People tear down houses. But furniture, fine, beautiful furniture, it just goes on and on, surviving everything.' She says, 'Armoires are the cockroaches of our culture.

Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do is this life is to let himself die.

Love is a moment of stillness that sometimes a word can shatter to pieces. Or love can be a thing that endures, a rich, deep current flowing unending through the years.

Broken things are powerful."Things about to break are stronger still.The last shot from the brittle bow is truest.

Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.

Fighting is life... Are you a person who gives up or are you a person who's going to fight?

Ten years is a pretty good run for anything.