“Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.”

You do not notice changes in what is always before you.

Sincerity is not a spontaneous flower nor is modesty either.

Hope costs nothing.

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.

There are no ordinary cats.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I want nothing from love, in short, but love.

If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.

I went to collect the few personal belongings which. I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.

Writing only leads to more writing.

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.

At sixty-three years of age, less a quarter, one still has plans.

Being wealthy when no one else is, is like being the only one at the party with a drink.

Did not one spend the first half of one’s days in dreams of happiness and the second half in regrets and terrors?

One miracle is just as easy to believe as another.

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.

Two people in a conversation amount to four people talking. The four are what one person says, what he really wanted to say, what his listener heard, and what he thought he heard.

No, the only things which do not bother me are the elements. I can overcome them without a fight. All one has to do to get the best of the elements is to stand pat and one will win.

No one can earn a million dollars honestly.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts – as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit.