... to be human is to be on the defensive, somewhere, somehow.

sanity, in my opinion, is an achievement. I have seen very few well-balanced people in my life who were not dunces.

I was not too stupid to learn, but too smart. Some instinct must have warned me that a woman accomplished in the domestic arts is frequently enslaved by them.

Maybe I shall never achieve happiness, but one thing I have had - the terrible wisdom of love.

Nothing fans me into such a state of peaceful mental somnambulance as the intellectual antics of a person who displays his learning, not from vanity always, but frequently because it is all he has got; no real sense, no wisdom of his own, merely much good stuff he has learned from other sources. He spreads it like a garment as any other decent person would to hide the thinness of his shanks.

Not everything you hear about yourself can be considered good publicity. And if you have delicate sensibilities, the currycomb of public imagination frequently rubs your vanities the wrong way.

So long as a man attends to his business the public does not count his drinks. When he fails they notice if he takes even a glass of root beer.