Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain.

There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.

There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.

Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself.

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards; and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.

I came to the conclusion that the optimist thought everything good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist thought everything bad, except himself.