The materialistic idealism that governs American life, that on the one hand makes a chariot of every grocery wagon, and on the other a mere hitching post of every star, lets every man lead a very enticing double life.

Educated people do indeed speak the same languages; cultivated ones need not speak at all.

Today's competitiveness, so much imposed from without, is exhausting, not exhilarating; is unending-a part of one's social life, one's solitude, one's sleep, one's sleeplessness.

The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to Advertising copy.

It is disgusting to pick your teeth; what is vulgar is to use a gold toothpick.

The essence of the expert is that his field shall be very special and narrow: one of the ways in which he inspires confidence is to rigidly limit himself to the little toe; he would scarcely venture an off-the-record opinion on an infected little finger.

A perfect conversation would run much less to brilliant sentences than to unfinished ones.