When in doubt, choose greatness.

Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. "Yes," he replied, "there is a meaning; at least, for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."

Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

The shock, for an intelligent writer, of discovering for the first time that there are people younger than himself who think him stupid is severe.

The goal of every culture is to decay through over-civilization; the factors of decadence, -- luxury, skepticism, weariness and superstition, -- are constant. The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.

The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life.

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.