... 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.

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.

idealism, that gaudy coloring matter of passion, fades when it is brought beneath the trenchant white light of knowledge. Ideals, like mountains, are best at a distance.

The hardest thing for me is the sense of impermanence. All passes; nothing returns.

The hardest thing to believe when you're young is that people will fight to stay in a rut, but not to get out of one.

There is a terrible loneliness in the spring.

It is easy to convince a man who already thinks as you do.