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

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

In the career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to enter the business of life in competition with adults.

the way to wean any one from a desire is not by condemnation of it.

It's a sign of your own worth sometimes if you are hated by the right people.

Women can always think as much as they like, an' they could get up on a platform an' talk till they bust, as long as they didn't want the world to be made no better, an' they wouldn't be thought unwomanly. It's soon as a woman wants any practical good done that she is considered a unwomanly creature.

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