It is unpardonable conceit not to laugh at your own jokes. Joking is undignified; that is why it is so good for one's soul. Do not fancy you can be a detached wit and avoid being a buffoon; you cannot. If you are the Court Jester you must be the Court Fool.

Boyhood is a most complex and incomprehensible thing. Even when one has been through it, one does not understand what it was. A man can never quite understand a boy, even when he has been the boy.

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

Brave men are all vertebrates; they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

A yawn is a silent shout.

The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts.

Women are the only realists; their whole object in life is to pit their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.