[A formula for answering controversial letters -- without even reading the letters:] Dear Sir (or Madame): You may be right.

I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist. . . . He plans to be both an artist and a moralist -- a master of lovely words and merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass of his community -- that is, if his career goes on to what is called a success.

The fundamental trouble with marriage is that it shakes a man's confidence in himself, and so greatly diminishes his general competence and effectiveness. His habit of mind becomes that of a commander who has lost a decisive and calamitous battle. He quite trusts himself thereafter.

A dull, dark, depressing day in Winter: the whole world looks like a Methodist church at Wednesday night prayer meeting.

If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.

There are two kinds of music; German music and bad music.

Popularity--The capacity for listening sympathetically when men boast of their wives and women complain of their husbands.