No one can write a best-seller by taking thought. The slightest touch of insincerity blurs its appeal. The writer who keeps his tongue in his cheek, who knows that he is writing for fools and that, therefore, he had better write like a fool, makes a respectable living out of serials and novelettes; but he will never make the vast, the blaring, half a million success. That comes of blended sincerity and vitality.

There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience.

It isn't only living people who die, it is great stretches of living, which can die even when the people who lived there still exist.

... it is nearly impossible to understand those who are beyond our sight, who are not explained to us by ties of birth or the contact of the flesh.

the bad is more easily perceived than the good. A fresh lobster does not give such pleasure to the consumer as a stale one will give him pain.

Unhappy people are dangerous.

Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.