Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.

The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail.

It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise.

The normal is what you find but rarely. The normal is an ideal. It is a picture that one fabricates of the average characteristics of men, and to find them all in a single man is hardly to be expected.

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.

The complete life, the perfect pattern, includes old age as well as youth and maturity. The beauty of the morning and the radiance of noon are good, but it would be a very silly person who drew the curtains and turned on the light in order to shut out the tranquillity of the evening. Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.