“I was five years old the first time I got drunk.”

It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all.

He was a silent fury who no torment could tame.

I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.

As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.

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

A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration.

There’s only one way to make a beginning, and that is to begin; and begin with hard work, and patience, prepared for all the dissapoint­ments.

Age is never so old as youth would measure it.

Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.

And how have I lived? Frankly and openly, though crudely. I have not been afraid of life. I have not shrunk from it. I have taken it for what it was at its own valuation. And I have not been ashamed of it. Just as it was, it was mine.

No; I did not hate him. The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings. I can say only that I knew the gnawing of a desire for vengeance on him that was a pain in itself and that exceeded all the bounds of language.

The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.

I would rather be ashes than dust.

Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.

I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed.

Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time.

America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s History shall reveal itself.

Wisdom is a virtue of old age, and it seems to come only to those who, when young, were neither wise nor prudent.

There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

Insecurity cuts deeper and extends more widely than bare unemployment. Fear of loss of work, dread of the oncoming of old age, create anxiety and eat into self-respect in a way that impairs personal dignity.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in, must learn to brave censure.

The fundamental event of the modern age is the conquest of the world as a picture.