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

The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?

Our natural egoism leads us to judge people by their relations to ourselves. We want them to be certain things to us, and for us that is what they are; because the rest of them is no good to us, we ignore it.

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]

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

The day broke grey and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed.

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos.