I have written chiefly because, though I have often dreaded the necessity, I have found it more painful, in the end, not to write.

to be honest and yet popular is almost as difficult in literature as it is in life.

Nothing in life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it.

It is human nature to overestimate the thing you've never had.

To drink for pleasure may be a distraction, but to drink from misery is always a danger.

... the ordinary is simply the universal observed from the surface, that the direct approach to reality is not without, but within. Touch life anywhereand you will touch universality wherever you touch the earth.

There is no state of satisfaction, because to himself no man is a success.