Jealousy is a keen observer, but looks for all the wrong signs.

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

A woman usually respects her father, but her view of her husband is mingled with contempt, for she is of course privy to the transparent devices by which she snared him.

Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.

The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.

Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens--of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases as brackish as so many lumps of sodium hyposulphite.