Prayer, among sane people, has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.

It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

What is more important in life than our bodies or in the world than what we look like?

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.

There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.