All war must be just the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity; strangers whom, in other circumstances, you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it.

Some of us cannot be optimists, but all of us can be bigamists

You need not expect to get your book right the first time.

I find that the further I go back, the better things were, whether they happened or not.

We must look for our own blame to find our own personality.

We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy,or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.

Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.