I was born, I think, with the desire to make beautiful books — brave books that would preserve the glories of the Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people, and re-awaken joy and magnanimity.

What am I that I am called upon to have prejudices concerning the universe?

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.

For all men have but a little while to live and none knows his fate thereafter. So that a man possesses nothing certainly save a brief loan of his body: and yet the body of man is capable of much curious pleasure.

No lady is ever a gentleman.

The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills — and as immortal.

What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this.