The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.
Our best built certainties are but sand-houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths.
There is nothing more frustrating than a good example.
I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.
Suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind – your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work.
There is nothing training can’t cannot do. Nothing is above its reach.
The offspring of riches: Pride, vanity, ostentation, arrogance, tyranny.
An ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music.
To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
The more you join with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you.
A great, great deal has been said about the weather, but very little has ever been done.
Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can’t sleep anyhow.
Make your vacation your vocation.
We find not much in ourselves to admire, we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.
Don’t wait; the time is never just right.
Love heightens all senses – except the common.
Honest poverty is a gem that even a king might be proud to call his own – but I wish to sell out.
If there wasn’t anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and finding out; and I don’t know but more so.
This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for breakfast.