Apart from the pleasure of looking at her and listening to her-of enjoying in her what others less discriminatingly but as liberally appreciated-he had the sense, between himself and her, of a kind of free-masonry of precocious tolerance and irony. They had both, in early youth, taken the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch.

The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.

I discovered early that crying makes my nose red, and the knowledge has helped me through several painful episodes.

Our blindest impulses become evidence of perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events.

No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity.

To your generation, I must represent the literary equivalent of tufted furniture and gas chandeliers.

There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.