Has there ever been an age so rife with neurotic sensibility, with that state of near shudders, or near hysteria, or near nausea, much of it induced by trifles, which used to belong to people who were at once ill-adjusted and over-civilized?

In an automobile civilization, which was one of constant motion and activity, there was almost no time to think; in a television one, there is small desire.

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

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it makes us vain, in fact, of our modesty.

The test of interesting people is that subject matter doesn't matter.

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

The technique of winning is so shoddy, the terms of winning are so ignoble, the tenure of winning is so brief; and the specter of the has-been-a shameful rather than a pitiable sight today-brings a sudden chill even to our sunlit moments.