“A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.”

“A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.”

“All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.”

“As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with an irrational fear of life become publishers.”

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”

“Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.”

“Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present.”

“It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.”

“Like water, we are truest to our nature in repose.”

“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.”

“No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.”

“No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, - something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.”

“Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.”

“Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.”

“The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.”

“The dread of lonliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.”

“The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.”

“The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.”

“The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.”

“There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another. This should be made clear to all who contemplate such a union. The avoidance of this pain is the beginning of wisdom, for it is strong enough to contaminate the rest of our lives.”

“Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.”

“Vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life.”

“We love but once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving.”

“We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy.”

“When young we are faithful to individuals, when older we grow loyal to situations and to types.”

“Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.”