Americans' great and secret fear is that America may turn out to be a phenomenon rather than a civilization.

For most people it's easier to support an eminent person in deserved disgrace than an obscure one who has been wronged.

Italians are never punctual; the café, the convenient place to wait, absolves them from that. There is no question of hanging about, no looking lost and unwanted or even disreputable, as there is in hotel lobbies or the foyers of restaurants. One just sits and enjoys the scene, and waits.

That was the trouble with experience; it taught you that most people were capable of anything, so that loyalty was never quite on firm ground -- or, rather, became a matter of pardoning offenses instead of denying their existence.

... one doesn't really profit from experience; one merely learns to predict the next mistake.

Since the moment of the United Nations' inception, untold energies have been expended by governments not only toward the exclusion of persons of principle and distinction from the organization's leading positions, but toward the installation of men whose character and affiliations would as far as possible preclude any serious challenge to governmental sovereignty.

Nothing creates such untruth in you as the wish to please.