For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.

My memory is certainly in my hands. I can remember things only if I have a pencil and I can write with it and I can play with it. ... I think your hand concentrates for you. I don't know why it should be so.

Babbitt as a book was planless; its end arrived apparently because its author had come to the end of the writing-pad, or rather, one might suspect from its length, to the end of all writing-pads then on the market.

art is at least in part a way of collecting information about the universe.

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.