“Another dead body. Every year it is the same. Every year, another dead body.”

People who relate what they believe to be new and startling information like to have such information received with exclamations of astonishment and admiration.

There is nothing sadder than the cheerful letters of the dead, expressing hopes that were never fulfilled, ambitions that were never achieved, dreams cut off before they could come to fruition.

I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to – mostly the latter.

I do, however, think it would be difficult to write books I don’t like to read.

If you take a man by surprise, and behave with sufficient arrogance, he will generally do what you ask. -Emerson

If someone lies down and invites you to trample upon him, you are a remarkable individual if you decline the invitation.

It’s not unsporting to thrash a cowardly cad,’ said Simmons. ‘Everyone knows you don’t fight like a gentleman.’ ‘That might be called an oxymoron,’ Ramses said. ‘Oh–sorry. Bad form to use long words. Look it up when you get home.’ The poor devil didn’t know how to fight, like a gentleman or otherwise.

Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries.

It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance?

Reputations are shaped not by facts but by prejudices.

The opportunity to lecture had restored my good humor.

When one is striding bravely into the future one cannot watch one’s footing.

The only people who are not in awe of Emerson’s powerful voice and well-nigh superhuman strength are the members of his own family. He is aware of this, and often complains about it; so from time to time I like to put on a little show of being intimidated. ‘Proceed, my dear,’ I said apologetically.

Cats always made up to the people who hated them the most. Depending on how you chose to look at it, it was a touching manifestation of trust, or a malicious pleasure in human discomfort.

Nothing looks as self-satisfied as a contented cat.

I would never have supposed that inexperienced girl was capable of such cold-blooded, calculating manipulation!

Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won’t be for another thousand years?

I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person.

A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.

All l mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings, only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying and they don’t know why either except that the strings are all in one another’s way.

The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.

It is but another of the proofs which are heaping up in American industry to-day that whatever is good for men and women – contributes to their health, happiness, development – is good for business.

Another way of judging the value of a prophet’s religious experience, therefore, would be to examine the type of manhood that he has created, and the cultural world that has sprung out of the spirit of his message.

Speculation in oil stock companies was another great evil … From the first, oil men had to contend with wild fluctuations in the price of oil. …