One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about your friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then, if we do that, we will never suffer a moment's boredom.

Every writer and artist wonders what in the world people of other professions can find to live for.

Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.

In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

Marriage is an arrangement by which two people start by getting the best out of each other and often end by getting the worst.

The only test of work of literature is that it shall please other ages than its own.

Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death.