He probably was mediocre after all, though in a very honorable sense of that word.

If the years of youth are experienced slowly, while the later years of life hurtle past at an ever-increasing speed, it must be habit that causes it. We know full well that the insertion of new habits or the changing of old ones is the only way to preserve life, to renew our sense of time, to rejuvenate, intensify, and retard our experience of time - and thereby renew our sense of life itself. That is the reason for every change of scenery and air.

The books and magazines streamed in. He could buy them all, they piled up around him and even while he read, the number of those still to be read disturbed him. … they stood in rows, weighing down his life like a possession which he did not succeed in subordinating to his personality.

A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.

I shall need to sleep three weeks on end to get rested from the rest I've had.

People's behavior makes sense if you think about it in terms of their goals, needs, and motives.

We don't love qualities, we love persons; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as of their qualities.