What people speak of as adventure is something nobody in his right mind would seek out, and it becomes romantic only when one is safely at home.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

Up to a point a person’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and changes in the world about them. Then there comes a time when it lies within their grasp to shape the clay of their life into the sort of thing they wish it to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune or the quirks of fate. Everyone has the power to say, "This I am today. That I shall be tomorrow.

Dogma is invariably wrong, as knowledge is always in a state of transition.

A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.

When you go to a country, you must learn how to say two things: how to ask for food, and to tell a woman that you love her. Of these the second is more important, for if you tell a woman you love her, she will certainly feed you.

Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.