We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own encumbered soul.

Any man worth his salt has by the time he is forty-five accumulated a crown of thorns, and the problem is to learn to wear it over one ear.

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.

Truth is what every man sees lurking at the bottom of his own soul, like the oyster shell housewives put in the kitchen kettle to collect the lime from the water. By and by each man's iridescent oyster shell of Truth becomes coated with the lime of prejudice and hearsay.

We've had bad luck with our kids - they've all grown up.

A mind too proud to unbend over the small ridiculosa of life is as painful as a library with no trash in it.

All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.