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.

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

Ours is not so much an age of vulgarity as of vulgarization; everything is tampered with or touched up, or adulterated or watered down, in an effort to make it palatable, in an effort to make it pay.

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

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.

Ours is the country where, in order to sell your product, you don't so much point out its merits as you first work like hell to sell yourself.

In general, American social life constitutes an evasion of talking to people. Most Americans don't, in any vital sense, get together; they only do things together.