“I want a girl because I want to bring her up so that she shan’t make the mistakes I’ve made.”

It is a nuisance that knowledge can only be acquired by hard work.

When I look back upon the girl I was I hate myself. But I never had a chance. I’m going to bring up my daughter so that she’s free and can stand on her own feet.

I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me.

We who are of mature age seldom suspect how unmercifully and yet with what insight the very young judge us.

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain.

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times.

A bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, he told her, to which she retorted that a proverb was the last refuge of the mentally destitute.

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.

Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it.

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

The future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now.

I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you.

The trouble is that thinking looks like loafing. Who wants to pay people for daydreaming?

If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.