We appreciate frankness from those who like us. Frankness from others is called insolence.

When you become used to never being alone, you may consider yourself Americanised

Almost all great writers have as their motif, more or less disguised, the passage from childhood to maturity, the clash between the thrill of expectation and the disillusioning knowledge of truth. 'Lost Illusion' is the undisclosed title of every novel.

You don't love a man for what he says, but love what he says because you love him.

Information is not culture. In the mind of a truly educated person, facts are organized, and they make up a living world in the image of the world of reality.

A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.