Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.
To my mind the most poignant mystical exhoration ever written is “Be still and know that I am God.”
As a rule people don’t collect books; they let books collect themselves.
A true friend is one who likes you despite your achievements.
Prepare to live by all means, but for Heaven’s sake do not forget to live.
During a long and varied career as a bachelor, I have noticed that marriage is the death of politeness between a man and a woman.
Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything. With it, all is possible, without it nothing. The supply of time is truly a daily miracle, an affair genuinely astonishing when one examines it.
Concentrate on something useful. Having decided to achieve a task, achieve it at all costs.
Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.
The test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.
I will never cease advising my friends and enemies to read poetry before anything.
Falsehood often lurks upon the tongue of him, who, by self-praise, seeks to enhance his value in the eyes of others.
Most people sleep themselves stupid.
No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recess of another mind.
Make love to every woman you meet; if you get five per cent of your outlay it’s a good investment.
Literature exists so that where one man has lived finely ten thousand may afterward live finely.
The moment you’re born you’re done for.
The parents exist to teach the child, but also they must learn what the child has to teach them; and the child has a very great deal to teach them.
All wrong doing is done in the sincere belief that it is the best thing to do.
It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.