Writing is the supreme solace.

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

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it.

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.

Now the answer ... is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.

She loved three things — a joke, a glass of wine, and a handsome man.

Culture is not just an ornament; it is the expression of a nation's character, and at the same time it is a powerful instrument to mould character. The end of culture is right living.