Most reputations are not ruined but forgotten.
Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little.
Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful.
The shades of respectability begin to close about the greying head.
If I play hard to get, soon the phone stops ringing altogether.
Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves.
Romantics consider common sense vulgar.
Think carefully before asking for justice. Mercy might be safer.
Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.
My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures.
In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.
Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money.
At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly.
Sloth, not ill-will, makes me unjust.
My parents wanted me to solace them for sorrows they denied having had.
The higher the moral tone, the more suspect the speaker.
After my spectacular failures, I could not be satisfied with an ordinary success.
Don't stare into a mirror when you are trying to solve a problem.
As equality increases, so does the number of people struggling for predominance.
The novel avoids the sublime and seeks out the interesting.