You can't dance cheerfully. Dancing is too important. It can be wild or solemn or gay or lewd or art for art's sake, but it can't be cheerful.

No man should tell a lie unless he is shrewd enough to recognize the time for renouncing it, if and when it comes, and knows how to renounce it gracefully.

If your ego is in good shape you will pretend you're surprised if a National Chairman calls you to tell you his party wants to nominate you for President of the United States, but you're not really surprised.

The constant petty behests of life permit few opportunities for major satisfactions, and when one is offered it should be seized.

War doesn't mature men; it merely pickles them in the brine of disgust and dread.

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story.