“Too much is written by the men who can’t write about the men who do write.”

Alcohol tells truth, but its truth is not normal.

He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which he lived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetness of spirit did not exist.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

Life, in a sense, is living and surviving. And all that makes for living and surviving is good. He who follows the fact cannot go astray, while he who has no reverence for the fact wanders afar.

Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.

The greatest of the arts is the conquering of men.

Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them.

The Law is a lie, and through it men lie most shamelessly.

I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

His conclusion was that things were not always what they appeared to be. The cub’s fear of the unknown was an inherited distrust, and it had now been strengthened by experience. Thenceforth, in the nature of things, he would possess an abiding distrust of appearances.

Don’t write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.

The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage.

Love cannot in its very nature be peaceful or content. It is a restlessness, an unsatisfaction. I can grant a lasting love just as I can grant a lasting unsatisfaction; but the lasting love cannot be coupled with possession, for love is pain and desire and possession is easement and fulfilment.

Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.

I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me.

Only the soldier is a free man, because he can look death in the face.

Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.

Men go shopping just as men go out fishing or hunting, to see how large a fish may be caught with the smallest hook.

A man who doesn’t think differently from his time and environment can’t grow beyond his time and environment.

It is the task of a good man to help those in misfortune.

Man, one may say, was never in such a completely animal condition; but he has, on the other hand, never escaped from it.

All things must; man is the only creature that wills.

Physically, a man is a man for a much longer time than a woman is a woman.