We cannot be sure that we ought not to regard the most criminal country as that which in some aspects possesses the highest civilization.

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.

It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.

Jealousy, that dragon which slays love under the pretence of keeping it alive.

Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each other's nature with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth.

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.

Charm is a woman's strength just as strength is a man's charm.

Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent.

I always seem to have a vague feeling that he is a Satan among musicians, a fallen angel in the darkness who is perpetually seeking to fight his way back to happiness.

Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.

No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep.

Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in his beauty deigns to walk.

Control your own time. Don't let it be done for you. If you are working off the in-box that is fed you, you are probably working on the priority of others.

Grease is the word, is the word that you heard, It's got groove, its got feeling.

It is impossible to move on to new states of mind unless you seek the forgiveness of those you've offended.

If someone plays a brooding actor in a film, people think they're brooding all the time.

Character is better than ancestry, and personal conduct is more important than the highest parentage.

The retirement system that is in place for members of Congress and other federal workers features what is known as the Federal Employment Retirement Plan.

I think it's a question which particularly arises over women writers: whether it's better to have a happy life or a good supply of tragic plots.