The test of a first-rate work, and a test of your sincerity in calling it a first-rate work, is that you finish it.

The parents exist to teach the child, but also they must learn what the child has to teach them; and the child has a very great deal to teach them

A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.

The moment you're born you're done for.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

If egotism means a terrific interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.

No mind, however loving, could bear to see plainly into all the recess of another mind.