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.

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

Those who have money think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know it is money.

Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the Gypsies.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

A bad memory is the mother of invention.

The more we feel sorry for ourselves, the less sorry others will feel for us. People don't waste their small store of sympathy on those who can provide it so richly for themselves.