A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.

What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!

It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.

Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.

No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.

There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.

Always focus on what is important—not what is urgent.

ASK YOURSELF: Have you found that being nice to some people is simply not effective? When might it be wise to throw down the gauntlet and get tough or confrontational?

Compelling characters are not cogs in the machine of your plot; they are human beings to whom the story happens.

I think I'm going to my grave without swimming from Cuba to Florida.

Everything becomes closer once you realize that the world is only as far away as a nap and a meal.

Erik Satie does not say the opposite of Debussy; he says the same thing only the other way round.

If nobody comes to your shows, then it's modern dance. If everybody comes to your shows and no one likes it, is that ballet? I don't know.

I've never particularly liked travelling with large groups or being told where to go by somebody else. I prefer to find out for myself.

The renunciation of doing harm is the perfection of discipline

Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.