To put a tempting face aside when duty demands every faculty is a lesson which takes most men longest to learn.

... the irony of life is not that you cannot forget but that you can.

Self-admiration giveth much consolation.

fiction is not only the historian of life but its apologist.

the curse of human nature is imagination. When a long anticipated moment comes, we always find it pitched a note too low, for the wings of imagination are crushed into its withering sides under the crowding hordes of petty realities.

Here is a simple recipe to begin with. Get up every morning with the set intention of writing and go to your desk and sit there for three hours, whether you accomplish anything or not. Before long you will find that you are writing madly, not waiting for inspiration.

I have come to the conclusion that the modern interpretation of the Declaration of Independence is something like this: I am as good as those that think themselves better and a long sight better than those who only think themselves as good.