He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Selflove seems so often unrequited.

He gave me a look of great contempt; as I supposed, for venturing, even by implication, to draw a parallel between a lack of affluence that might, literally, affect my purchase of rare vintages, and a figure of speech intended delicately to convey his own dire want for the bare necessities of life. He remained silent for several seconds, as if trying to make up his mind whether he could ever bring himself to speak to me again; and then said gruffly: 'I've got to go now.'

One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.

Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.

It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illuminates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.

Parents. . . are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfil the promise of their early years.