“A good listener is usually thinking about something else.”

When some folks agree with my opinions I begin to suspect I’m wrong.

If there’s anything a public servant hates to do it’s something for the public.

There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

It ain’t a bad plan to keep still occasionally even when you know what you’re talking about.

It’s what a fellow thinks he knows that hurts him.

Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.

Nothing dispels enthusiasm like a small admission fee.

Of all the home remedies, a good wife is best.

Some people are so sensitive that they feel snubbed if an epidemic overlooks them.

Some folks pay a compliment like they went down in their pocket for it.

Every father expects his boy to do the things he wouldn’t do when he was young.

The election is not very far off when a candidate can recognize you across the street.

When you consider what a chance women have to poison their husbands, it’s a wonder there isn’t more of it done

Litigation: A form of hell whereby money is transferred from the pockets of the proletariat to that of lawyers.

No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.

There’s a point, around the age of twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities.

The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.

Above all else, never think you’re not good enough.

In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They’re both very good things.

It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.

People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool’s caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else’s are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.

Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.

I am still encouraged to go on. I wouldn’t know where else to go.