The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.

When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it.

It is cruel to discover one's mediocrity only when it is too late. It does not improve the temper.

A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.

A mother only does her children harm if she makes them the only concern of her life.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me.