It's the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age.

Courage was America's watchword, but a courage of the body rather than of the soul - physical courage, not moral.

there is something shameful about the death of a play. It does not die with pity, but contempt. A book may fail, but who is there to know it? It dies and is buried, and is decently interred on the bookseller's shelf; but the play dies to laughter, to scorn and disdain.

my family, although it keeps its hair, turns gray early - a business asset but a social handicap.

The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.

[On fishing:] Greatest rest in the world for the brain.

as all women know, there are really no men at all. There are grown-up boys, and middle-aged boys, and elderly boys, and even sometimes very old boys. But the essential difference is simply exterior. Your man is always a boy.