Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called "prophylaxis" in New York.

The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.

The world organization debates disarmament in one room and, in the next room, moves the knights and pawns that make national arms imperative.

Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.

A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix things up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.

I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn't know where else to go.

The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.