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

I'd sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.

I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.

Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

It is good to be on your guard against an Englishman who speaks French perfectly; he is very likely to be a card-sharper or an attache in the diplomatic service.

I'm not only my spirit buy my body, and who can decide how much I, my individual self, am conditioned by the accident of my body? Would Byron have been Byron but for his club foot, or Dostoyevsky Dostoyevsky without his epilepsy?