What happiness is, no person can say for another. But no one, I am convinced, can be happy who lives only for himself. The joy of living comes from immersion in something that we know to be bigger, better, more enduring and worthier than we are.

Friendship should be a private pleasure, not a public boast. I loathe those braggarts who are forever trying to invest themselves with importance by calling important people by their first names in or out of print. Such first-naming for effect makes me cringe.

Part of the American myth is that people who are handed the skin of a dead sheep at graduating time think that it will keep their minds alive forever.

Something deathless and dangerous in the world sweeps past you...It is something fearful and ominous, something turbulent and to be dreaded, which distends the drama to include the life of nations as well as of men. It is an ageless warning.

The critic is a man who prefers the indolence of opinion to the trials of action.

The purpose of writing is to hold a mirror to nature, but too much today is written from small mirrors in vanity cases.

So much of TV seems to be chewing gum for the eyes.... TV desperately needs more self-reliance and pride in the medium.