It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.

The only happy talkers are dandies who extract pleasure from the very perishability of their material and who would not be able to tolerate the isolation of all other forms of composition; for most good talkers, when they have run down, are miserable; they know that they have betrayed themselves, that they have taken material which should have a life of its own, to dispense it in noises upon the air.

No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.

There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.

Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities; it is all they have to insure their places in the world.

The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.

In the sex war, thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female.