Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.

The lusts of the flesh can be gratified anywhere; it is not this sort of license that distinguishes New York. It is rather, a lust of the total ego for recognition, even for eminence. More than elsewhere, everybody here wants to be somebody.

Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.

Just about the only interruption we don't object to is applause.

By the time a man asks you for advice, he has generally made up his mind what he wants to do, and is looking for confirmation rather than counseling.

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.

A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.