Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.

Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers

To watch a football game is to be in a prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an emergency happening at a distance than a game. I don't wonder the spectators take to drink.

In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.

Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap

I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.