It is so comic to hear oneself called old, even at ninety I suppose!

I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn't happen, I may lose a little of the sense of isolation and desolation which abides with me. My circumstances allowing of nothing but the ejaculation of one-syllabled reflections, a written monologue by that most interesting being, myself, may have its yet to be discovered consolations.

It is so comic to hear oneself called old, even at ninety I suppose!

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

What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading.

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

The gain isn't counted to the recluse and inactive that, having nothing to measure themselves by and never being tested by failure, they simmer and soak perpetually in conscious complacency.