“A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.”
“We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stutter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.”
“The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of their blood.”
“All my life, as down an abyss without a bottom. I have been pouring van loads of information into that vacancy of oblivion I call my mind.”
“There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.”
“What pursuit is more elegant than that of collecting the ignominies of our nature and transfixing them for show, each on the bright pin of a polished phrase?”
“That we should practice what we preach is generally admitted; but anyone who preaches what he and his hearers practice must incur the gravest moral disapprobation.”
“Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets. What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.”
“Then I though of reading -- the nice and subtle happiness of reading ... this joy not dulled by age, this polite and unpunishable vice, this selfish, serene, lifelong intoxication.”
“The indefatigable pursuit of an unattainable perfection --even though nothing more than the pounding of an old piano --is what alone gives a meaning to our life on this unavailing star.”
“The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people. To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.”