If you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.

A Librettist is a mere drudge in the world of opera.

Tristan and Isolde were lucky to die when they did. They'd have been sick of all that rubbish in a year.

The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline.

I came at last to a recognition of myself as, in part, a Tom Sawyer who wanted everything done according to the rules of romantic fiction, and complicated simple solutions with his absurd adolescent, book-born nonsense.

Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity; rather it is an elaborate balancing act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites.

As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggish--about half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.