Eighteen might look at thirty-four through a rising mist of adolescence, but twenty-two would see thirty-eight with discerning clarity.
The sign of intelligence is the ability to carry opposed thoughts at the same time.
Premature success gives one an almost mystical conception of destiny as opposed to will power-at its worst the Napoleonic delusion.
The world is always curious, and people become valuable merely for their inaccessibility.
This is what I think now: that the natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness.
Your first most typical figure in any new place turns out to be a bluff or a local nuisance.
Fairies: Nature’s attempt to get rid of soft boys by sterilizing them.
Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them – their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.
The two basic stories of all times are Cinderella and Jack the Giant Killer-the charm of women and the courage of men.
Optimism is the content of small men in high places.
If all your clothes are worn to the same state, it means you go out too much.
It was strange to have no self-to be like a little boy left alone in a big house, who knew that now he could do anything he wanted to do, but found that there was nothing that he wanted to do.
I just couldn’t make the grade as a hack-that, like everything else, requires a certain practiced excellence.
So there was not an “I” anymore-not a basis on which I could organize my self-respect-save my limitless capacity for toil that it seemed I possessed no more.
I don’t much care where I am anymore, nor expect very much from places.
Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid.
I’ve noticed that the children of other nations always seem precocious. That’s because the strange manners of their elders have caught our attention most and the children echo those manners enough to seem like their parents.
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.
Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.