The position of children as a group, in a commercial society, is not wholly advantageous. A commercial society urges its citizens to be responsible for things, but not for people. It is the unquestioned assumption of a mercantile culture that things need and deserve attention, but that people can take care of themselves.

One of the less dismaying aspects of race relations in the United States is that their improvement is not a matter of a few people having a great deal of courage. It is a matter of a great many people having just a little courage.

Folklore is a collection of ridiculous notions held by other people, but not by you and me.

There are ... other business societies - England, Holland, Belgium and France, for instance. But ours [the United States] is the only culture now extant in which business so completely dominates the national scene that sports, crime, sex, death, philanthropy and Easter Sunday are money-making propositions.

A lady getting a missing belt back from the cleaner couldn't have been more surprised and pleased.

The only men who can turn my blood stream into a condition resembling heavy surf are good-looking heels with characters as intricately unpleasant as the sewers of Paris. With decent and honorable gents, I come all over Platonic. Was ever a woman so perverse and wrongheaded?

the conversation whipped gaily around the table like rags in a high wind.