New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!

Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.

A man must have something to cling to. Without that he is as a pea vine sprawling in search of a trellis.... I was all asprawl, clinging to Beauty, which is a very restless trellis.

A schoolchild should be taught grammar—for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy.

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

I don't understand it, and I don't like what I don't understand.

You can dissect a joke just as you can a frog. But it tends to die on you.