Experience is a poor guide to man, and is seldom followed. What really teaches a man is not experience, but observation.

Every autobiography ... becomes an absorbing work of fiction, with something of the charm of a cryptogram.

The only way that a government can provide for jobs for all citizens is by deciding what every man should do.

The essence of a sound style is that it cannot be reduced to rules-that it is a living and breathing thing with something of the devilish in it-that it fits its proprietor tightly yet ever so loosely, as his skin fits him. It is, in fact, quite as seriously an integral part of him as that skin is. . . . In brief, a style is always the outward and visible symbol of a man, and cannot be anything else.

Happiness is the china shop; love is the bull.

Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.

What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who soughtto cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.