I suppose there is something in all of us that harks back to the soil. When you come to think of it, what are picnics but outcroppings of instinct? No one really enjoys them or expects to enjoy them, but with the first warm days some prehistoric instinct takes us out into the woods, to fry potatoes over a strangling wood fire or spend the next week getting grass stains out of our clothes. It must be instinct; every atom of intelligence warns us to stay at home near the refrigerator.

Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that. I'm a lawyer.

[On the Irish:] Strange race ... Don't know what they want, but want it like the devil.

When a great burden is lifted, the relief is not always felt at once. The galled places still ache.

Herbert used to say that he was as tight as the paper on the wall.

There is no place in the world, I imagine, for a philosopher with a sense of humor, a new leisure, and an inquiring turn of mind!

there is no truly honest autobiography.