I've liked life well enough, but I reckon I'll like death even better as soon as I've gotten used to the feel of it. ... I shouldn't be amazed to find it less lonely than life after I'm once safely settled.

The only natural human beings seem to be those who are making trouble.

To teach one's self is to be forced to learn twice.

In the past few years, I have made a thrilling discovery ... that until one is over sixty, one can never really learn the secret of living. One can then begin to live, not simply with the intense part of oneself, but with one's entire being.

The world of the egotist is, inevitably, a narrow world, and the boundaries of self are limited to the close horizon of personality.... But, within this horizon, there is room for many attributes that are excellent.

Knowledge, like experience, is valid in fiction only after it has dissolved and filtered down through the imagination into reality.

I liked human beings, but I did not love human nature.