Horse sense is the instinct that keeps horses from betting on men.

That was the way with grief: it left you alone for months together until you thought that you were cured, and then without warning it blotted out the sunlight.

It is the utterly destructive quality. When you say vanity, you are thinking of the kind that admires itself in mirrors and buys things to deck itself out in. But that is merely personal conceit. Real vanity is something quite different. A matter not of person but of personality. Vanity says, "I must have this because I am me." It is a frightening thing because it is incurable.

One would expect boredom to be a great yawning emotion, but it isn't, of course. It's a small niggling thing.

Most people's first books are their best anyways. It's the one they wanted most to write.

Riches ... don't consist in having things, but in not having to do something you don't want to do. ... Riches is being able to thumb your nose.

After three days without one, the desire to read a newspaper vanished. And really, one was happier without.