Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery.

A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue.

Why do we call all our generous ideas illusions, and the mean ones truths?

It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.

Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them." Mark Twain "...every literature, in its main lines, reflects the chief characteristics of the people for whom, and about whom, it is written.

Everybody who does anything at all does too much.

There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.