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

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.

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.

It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.

If he’s getting married, he’s not longer interesting.

I’ve entered the world of wine without any professional training, but a definite appetite for good bottles.

I have found my voice again and the art of using it.

We only do well the things we like doing.

A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men.

Humility is to make a right estimate of one’s self. It is no humility for a man to think less of himself than he ought, though it might rather puzzle him to do that.

You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.

What is it possible to do well, in physics particularly, if things are not reduced to degrees and measures?

Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.

It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.

Even now I know it: yes, all my hopes will be fulfilled… yes… the Lord will work wonders for me which will surpass infinitely my immeasurable desires.

A sense of humor is the main measure of sanity.

Charity is to be measured, not by what one has given away, but by what one has left.