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

One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience.

Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament and not of income.

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

Money and sex are forces too unruly for our reason; they can only be controlled by taboos with which we tamper at our peril.

One's own vanities and humiliations I find a delicious subject for conversation. Things said of me behind my back I don't enjoy, and don't listen to them.

Don't tell friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.