Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.

The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.

Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.

It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

Nothing is sadder than the consequences of having worldly standards without worldly means.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.

The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.

The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an Orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them.

A collison is what happens when two motorists go after the same pedestrian.

Fighting is essentially a masculine idea; a woman's weapon is her tongue.

I do think film can change culture, in a way that reading a story in the New York Times does not.

In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there is no value, - and if there were, it would be of no value.

I was also an only child and my father really wanted a son - he's from that generation - it was always about kung-fu theater on Sundays and boxing games on the weekend.

One of the ego's favorite paths of resistance is to fill you with doubt.

It has been convincingly demonstrated that countries where there are high rates of poverty, or high rates of economic inequality, are the countries with the highest rates of religious beliefs.

I'm not living under false delusions myself.

The money one gets for selling one's soul is always spent in deadening one's conscience, so the net gain at the end of a lifetime is no greater than if the diabolic bargain had not been struck.

Here's that which is too weak to be a sinner, honest water, which ne'er left man i' the mire.