I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It's very persnickety and old-maidish really, but then when I'm working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.

Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.

I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much.

He shrugged his shoulders to shift the pain of failure---the pain that is so much greater than the pleasure of success.

A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference.

My mental hands were empty, and I felt I must do something as a counterirritant or antibody to my hysterical alarm at getting married at the age of 43.

Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due