It seems that the creative faculty and the critical faculty cannot exist together in their highest perfection.

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and, for all that, yield a plausible harmony.

I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.

Perfect is determined in shortened measures of time, not over long periods of time or lifetimes. It would be unnatural.

Look after your laundry, and your soul will look after itself.

It is one of the defects of my character that I cannot altogether dislike anyone who makes me laugh.