If we discovered that we only had five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.

From now until the end of time no one else will ever see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the best of my chance.

New York is Babylon : Brooklyn is the truly Holy City. New York is the city of envy, office work, and hustle; Brooklyn is the region of homes and happiness.... There is no hope for New Yorkers, for their glory in Their skyscraping sins; but in Brooklyn there is the wisdom of the lowly.

Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.

Continually one faces the horrible matter of making decisions. The solution is, as far as possible, to avoid conscious rational decisions and choices; simply to do what you find yourself doing; to float in the great current of life with as little friction as possible; to allow things to settle themselves, as indeed they do with the most infallible certainty.

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.

Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men.