Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.

There are the stars--doing their old, old crisscross journeys in the sky. Scholars haven't settled the matter yet, but they seem to think there are no living beings out there. Just chalk... or fire. Only this one is straining away, straining away all the time to make something of itself. Strain's so bad that every sixteen hours everybody lies down and gets a rest.

Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.

The stuff of which masterpieces are made drifts about the world waiting to be clothed in words.

People a thousand years from now - this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the 20th century. This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our living and in our dying.

Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.

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.