The first fact about the celebration of a birthday is that it is a way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.

Most Americans are born drunk, and really require a little wine or beer to sober them.

It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything - even pride.

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.

It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion.

There is nothing so weak, for working purposes, as this enormous importance attached to immediate victory. There is nothing that fails like success.

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