“Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.”

One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die.

Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.

If a thing’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing well.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin.

You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.

A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions , but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.

There is something incomparably thrilling in first opening a brand new book.

Words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity.

Don’t hold your parents up to contempt. After all, you are their son, and it is just possible that you may take after them.

To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.

He was gifted with the sly, sharp instinct for self-preservation that passes for wisdom among the rich.

For in that city -New York; there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

What is youth except a man or a woman before it is ready or fit to be seen.

I prefer all but the very worst travel books, to all but the very best novels.

It is a curious thing. That every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

Prayer in action is love, love in action is service.

There is no such thing as ‘too insane’ unless others turn up dead due to your actions.

We must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply and so many of our old ideas disparage.

Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.”

Love is action. It isn’t just talk, and it never was.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect.

I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action.