it is wiser to be conventionally immoral than unconventionally moral. It isn't the immorality they object to, but the originality.

It would appear, from the best examples, that the proper way of beginning a preface to one's work is with a humble apology for having written at all.

... in the nineteen-thirties ... the most casual reader of murder mysteries could infallibly detect the villain, as soon as there entered a character who had recently washed his neck and did not commit mayhem on the English language.

Mediocrity would always win by force of numbers, but it would win only more mediocrity.

Of one thing alone I am very sure: it is a law of our nature that the memory of longing should survive the more fugitive memory of fulfillment.

It is difficult to deal successfully, he decided, with a woman whose feelings cannot be hurt.

No idea is so antiquated that it was not once modern. No idea is so modern that it will not someday be antiquated.