I never saw the man yet that came out of politics as clean as he went into 'em.

Yes, I learned long ago that the only satisfaction of authorship lies in finding the very few who understand what we mean. As for outside rewards, there is not one that I have ever discovered.

In her abhorrrence of a vacuum, Nature, for the furtherance of her favorite hobby, has often to resort to strange devices. If she could but understand that vacuity is sometimes better than superfluity!

I would write of the universal, not the provincial, in human nature.... I would write of characters, not of characteristics.

Nothingis so ungrateful as a rising generation; yet, if there is any faintest glimmer of light ahead of us in the present, itwas kindled by the intellectual fires that burned long before us.

Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?

... though not invariably the worst choice, war is always an obscene horror.