We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.
The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut.
I promised myself that if ever I had some money that I would savor a cigar each day after lunch and dinner. This is the only resolution of my youth that I have kept, and the only realized ambition which has not brought disillusion.
Loving-kindness is the better part of goodness.
The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to the devil. It is the sixth sense which enables you to enjoy the other five.
The artist produces for the liberation of his soul.
If people waited to know one another before they married, the world wouldn’t be as overpopulated as it is now.
There’s no one as transparent as the person who thinks he’s devilish deep.
A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her the opportunity. It is her favourite form of self indulgence.
By the time a man notices that he is no longer young, his youth has long since left him.
Reserve is an artificial quality that is developed in most of us but as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
You learn more quickly under the guidance of experienced teachers. You waste a lot of time going down blind alleys if you have no one to lead you.
We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.
I’ve always been interested in people, but I’ve never liked them.
I wonder how anyone can have the face to condemn others when he reflects upon his own thoughts.
The nature of men and women – their essential nature – is so vile and despicable that if you were to portray a person as he really is, no one would believe you.
It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.
The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.