The success or failure of a life, as far as posterity goes, seems to lie in the more or less luck of seizing the right moment of escape

I make it a rule always to believe compliments implicitly for five minutes, and to simmer gently for twenty more.

I wonder whether if I had an education I should have been more or less a fool that I am.

Who would ever give up the reality of dreams for relative knowledge?

The difficulty about all this dying, is that you can't tell a fellow anything about it, so where does the fun come in?

Ah! Those strange people who have the courage to be unhappy! Are they unhappy, by the way?

If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich.