Just as the painter thinks with his brush and paints the novelist thinks with his story.

Any society that values wealth above freedom will lose its freedom, and will ultimately lose its wealth as well

The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.

if you'd ever had a grown-up daughter you'd know that by comparison a bucking steer is easy to manage. And as to knowing what goes on inside her - well, it's much better to pretend you're the simple, innocent old fool she almost certainly takes you for.

Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

I happen to think we’ve set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.

Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical.