...Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the 'noblest work of God.'

The world doesn't owe you anything. It was here first.

The happy phrasing of a compliment is one of the rarest of human gifts, and the happy delivery of it another.

We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains - chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment - in a word, Circumstance, and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain.

Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.

Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages.

And so when I couldn't stand it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied.