Growing old is not a gradual decline, but a series of drops, full of sorrow, from one ledge to another below it.

Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.

The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists the circulation of the blood.

All our lives we are putting pennies — our most golden pennies — into penny-in-the-slot machines that are almost always empty.

One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.

It is the dread of something happening, something unknown and dreadful, that makes us do anything to keep the flicker of talk from dying out.

I might give my life for my friend, but he had better not ask me to do up a parcel.