Life takes hold of us with strong hands and makes us greater than we thought.

one reason we haven't any national art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of beauty.

You think religion is what's inside a little building filled with pretty lights from stained glass windows. But it's not. It's wings! Wings!

gossip ... is only fiction produced by non-professionals.

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it's such a nice change from being young.

What a fearfully distracting, perplexing and heart-searching business it is to live.

Father sticks to it that anything that promises to pay too much can't help being risky.