I knew that suffering did not enoble; it degraded. It made men selfish, petty and suspicious. It absorbed them in small things...it made them less than men; and I wrote ferociously that we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

I've met so many people, often the scum of the earth, and found them, you know, quite decent. I am an uncomfortable stranger to moral indignation.

Make him laugh and he will think you a trivial fellow, but bore him in the right way and your reputation is assured.

If only the good were a little less heavy-footed

We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house.

The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.

It's no use crying over spilt milk, because all of the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.