Whether you fail or set the world on fire cannot make so very much difference if only you have the opportunity to try for it, to work for it, to think of nothing else!

her age was that indeterminate mixture of everlasting youth and anticipated wisdom which is the glory and the curse of genius.

orthodoxy is a fixed habit of mind. The average man and woman hug their orthodoxies and spit their venom on those that outrage them.

If you can't get the very best in this world, take nothing.

there is only one thing we do know and that is that we do not know anything.

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

Did any great genius ever enter the world in the wake of commonplace pre-natal conditions? Was a maker of history ever born amidst the pleasant harmonies of a satisfied domesticity? Of a mother who was less than remarkable, although she may have escaped being great? Did a woman with no wildness in her blood ever inform a brain with electric fire? The students of history know that while many mothers of great men have been virtuous, none have been commonplace, and few have been happy.