“The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.”
“It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humor.”
“Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.”
“It is unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.”
“The world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willing avoids the sight of distress.”
“Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.”
“I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.”
“Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.”
“Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.”
“Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it...”
“Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.”
“Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.”
“The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.”
“It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.”
“I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.”
“American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.”
“Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers.”
“If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.”
“What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.”
“Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.”
“Death doesn't affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn't concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.”
“The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.”
“You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.”
“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”
“It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.”
“There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.”
“Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.”
“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom: and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too.”
“Any nation that thinks more of its ease and comfort than its freedom will soon lose its freedom; and the ironical thing about it is that it will lose its ease and comfort too.”
“Common-sense appears to be only another name for the thoughtlessness of the unthinking. It is made of the prejudices of childhood, the idiosyncrasies of individual character and the opinion of the newspapers.”