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

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.

When we say we are certain so-and-so can't possibly have done it, what we mean is that we think he very likely did.

We need new friends; some of us are cannibals who have eaten their old friends up; others must have ever-renewed audiences before whom to re-enact the ideal version of their lives.

What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they've taken away?

The emergence of a new term to describe a certain phenomenon, of a new adjective to designate a certain quality, is always of interest, both linguistically and from the point of view of the history of human thought.

You cannot be both fashionable and first-rate