“I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.”

People talk of beauty lightly, and having no feeling for words, they use that one carelessly, so that it loses its force; and the thing it stands for, sharing its name with a hundred trivial objects, is deprived of dignity.

Death doesn’t affect the living because it has not happened yet. Death doesn’t concern the dead because they have ceased to exist.

If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one.

He is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water.

Oh, it is dreadfully bitter to look at a woman whom you have loved with all your heart and soul, so that you felt you could not bear to let her out of your sight, and realize that you would not mind if you never saw her again. The tragedy of love is indifference.

Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five.

Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

Men seek but one thing in life — their pleasure.

There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.

There are two good things in life – freedom of thought and freedom of action.

Of all the hokum with which this country [America] is riddled, the most odd is the common notion that it is free of class distinctions.

It is bad enough to know the past; it would be intolerable to know the future.

If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.