Hearts that are delicate and kind and tongues that are neither - these make the finest company in the world.

How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

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.

Eat with the rich, but go to the play with the poor, who are capable of joy.

How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!

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