Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Failure make people bitter and cruel. Success improves the character of the man.

Our wise old church...has discovered that if you will act as if you believed belief will be given to you; if you pray with doubt, but pray with sincerity, your doubt will be dispelled; if you will surrender yourself to the beauty of that liturgy the power of which over the human spirit has been proved by the experience of the ages, peace will descend upon you.

It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.

Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more telling. To know that a thing actually happened gives it a poignancy, touches a chord, which a piece of acknowledged fiction misses. It is to touch this chord that some authors have done everything they could to give you the impression that they are telling the plain truth.

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too. [The human element]