No one has yet had the courage to memorialize his wealth on his tombstone. A dollar mark would not look well there.

Mere words will not do. They must convey the color, charm, and pulse of life. They must have a private twinkle of wit in them that makes a good-natured noise like laughter through the keyhole of the reader's mind.

The bravest thing you can do when you are not brave is to profess courage and act accordingly.

I remember being very smart, which is a form of stupidity. I try not to remember it, but it occurs to me that I may have felt intellectual. I entertained views too noble or too bitter to be true. I must have done some soul-stretching of my mental neck.

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

I think now happiness is a thing you practice like music until you have skill in striking the right notes on time. We have no vocation for it. And I had no practice, not a day when I was free from care and one great anxiety - and one must be free to be happy. I know that much about it by having missed it.

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