Experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.

Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing for me to say. I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person ever really ceases to feel young - I mean, for a whole day at a time.

To lodge all power in one party and keep it there is to insure bad government and the sure and gradual deterioration of the public morals.

The conviction of the rich that the poor are happier is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

The unspoken word is capital. We can invest it or we can squander it.

Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination?

When one's character begins to fall under suspicion and disfavor, how swift, then, is the work of disintegration and destruction.