There is, happily, no limit to the faith of human nature in believing what it wants to believe.

[On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.

Virtue in a man doesn't make you want to grab him.

I am unable, mentally incapable, of relating the dead thing, the broken body refusing to divulge why or where the occupant has gone, to the thing that was alive.

If happiness comes at all: which is by no means prearranged; it comes by the way, while you are seeking for something else. Something outside yourself, beyond yourself: in a brief absorption of self-forgetfulness.

Between threading a needle and raving insanity is the smallest eye in creation.

... the mere thought of going near a man who is not mellowly pickled, and whose breath reeks of his native fleshy self, is squeamishly unpalatable to me.