We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.

On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.

A convention is an agreed-upon falsehood, a permitted lie.

A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even if he's reading a history book.

I not only bow to the inevitable; I am fortified by it.

There's nothing like mixing with women to bring out all the foolishness in a man of sense.

Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.