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.

A good conversationalist is not one who remembers what was said, but says what someone wants to remember.

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.

No man, with a man's heart in him gets far on his way without some bitter, soul-searching disappointment. Happy is he who is brave enough to push on to another stage of the journey.

I have lived long enough to be battered by the realities of life, and not too long to be downed by them.

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.