Few things in life are more embarrassing than the necessity of having to inform an old friend that you have just got engaged to his fiancee.
W. C. FieldsRead
You can fool some of the people some of the time -- and that's enough to make a decent living.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that misleading people occasionally can be beneficial for personal gain.
W. C. Fields humorously points out the idea that a person can achieve a comfortable life by taking advantage of people's gullibility. The quote reflects a cynical view of human nature, implying that a small amount of deception can lead to success, as long as it is done selectively and occasionally.
In practice
To make light of a situation during a speech about ethics in business.
Few things in life are more embarrassing than the necessity of having to inform an old friend that you have just got engaged to his fiancee.
Drown in a cold vat of whiskey? Death, where is thy sting?
I was married once--in San Francisco. I haven't seen her for many years. The great earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed the marriage certificate. There's no legal proof. Which proves that earthquakes aren't all bad.
If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.
Christmas at my house is always at least six or seven times more pleasant than anywhere else. We start drinking early. And while everyone else is seeing only one Santa Claus, we'll be seeing six or seven.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called 'educated' making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? [...] The best thing that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness—in plain English, the stupidity which is still the average mark of our culture.
While we are sitting in meditation, we are simply exploring humanity and all of creation in the form of ourselves. We can become the world's greatest experts on anger, jealousy, and self-deprecatio n, as well as on joyfulness, clarity, and insight. Everything that human beings feel, we feel. We can become extremely wise and sensitive to all of humanity and the whole universe simply by knowing ourselves, just as we are.
The woman who follows the crowd will usually believe that I said this.
A coward judges all he sees by what he is.
We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.
He who cannot find time to consult his Bible will one day find he has time to be sick; he who has no time to pray must find time to die; he who can find no time to reflect is most likely to find time to sin; he who cannot find time for repentance will find an eternity in which repentance will be of no avail; he who cannot find time to work for others may find an eternity in which to suffer for himself.
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