Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.

As against having beautiful workshops, studies, etc., one writes best in a cellar on a rainy day.

People of small calibre are always carping. How affected so-and-so is! Don't you think he is silly? He was certainly quite mistaken about this or that. They are bent on showing their own superiority, their knowledge or their prowess or good breeding.

Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.