“Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.”

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.

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

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.

If a man hasn’t what’s necessary to make a woman love him, it’s his fault, not hers.

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out.

Unconditional love. That’s what he wants to give her and what he wants from her. People should give without wanting anything in return.

If anything good came out of 9/11, to me, was that people were so cynical about the world.

Technology is anything invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff.

People are willing to pay you if you’re any good at all, and you have plenty of time for screwing around.

You’ll never win anything with kids.

People will ask me, “How do you approach writing books for young readers differently than for adults?” My answer is always: I don’t change anything about the story itself.

I read very little contemporary anything.

Anything that we can do to raise personal savings is very much in the interest of this country.