A man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas.

To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.

When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.

It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.

The man who never tells an unpalatable truth 'at the wrong time' (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.