The next time you try to seduce anyone, don't do it with talk, with words. Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

I don't suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don't have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn't hear.

I took out my watch and listened to it clicking away, not knowing it couldn't even lie

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection.

She was the captain of her soul

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.

Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire.