Every now and again it would be considered wholesome for me to be more with people of my own age. Demotion to such company was a sapless exile. Their inanity was insufferable.

There are only two kinds of parents. Those who think their offspring can do nothing wrong, and those who think they can do nothing right.

All is egotism. The only people whose mainspring is not egotism are the dead and perhaps idiots.

Heed the spark or you may dread the fire.

I'm sure it's not any wish of mine that I'm born with inclinations for better things. If I could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I'd be born the lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I could find plenty of companionship, or I'd be born an idiot, which would be better still.

It is the highest form of culture and craftmanship in art to use local materials. That way you stand a chance of adding to culture. The other way you are in danger of merely imitating it.

What I absorbed from autobiographies was not how to be great so much as the littleness of the great.