The test of a vocation is the love of the drudgery it involves.

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.

Only those who get into scrapes with their eyes open can find the safe way out.

People before the public live an imagined life in the thought of others, and flourish or feel faint as their self outside themselves grows bright or dwindles in that mirror.

He who goes against the fashion is himself its slave

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.

A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent