A long while ago an eager group of reformers wrote to me asking if I could suggest anything that would improve the morals of the American people. I replied that the trouble with the American people in general was not lack of morals but lack of brains.

the best of all good friends is pride.

Writing was my real life and I was more at home with the people of my imagination than with the best I met in the objective world.

Men are not amusing during the shooting season; but, after all, my dear, men were not especially designed to amuse women.

No loose fish enters our quiet bay.

There is nothing so carking as the pangs of unsatisfied curiosity.

Our impulses are our birthright. To alter personality would be unjust, almost criminal, for the impulses that make a fool or worse of us in certain circumstances may be necessary for our happiness.