if you are going to be pushed you had better jump

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.

I have in my own fashion learned the lesson that life is effort, unremittingly repeated.

People can be in general pretty well trusted, of course--with the clock of their freedom ticking as loud as it seems to do here--to keep an eye on the fleeting hour.

I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

If this was love, love had been overrated.

Autobiography may be the preeminent kind of American expression.