It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away.

Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore that name. Are they all alike. I think so.

A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing.

How do you like what you have. This is a question that anybody can ask anybody. Ask it.

The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.

I often think how celebrated I am. / It is difficult not to think how celebrated I am. / And if I think how celebrated I am / They know who know that I am new / That is I knew I know how celebrated I am / And after all it astonishes even me.

Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.