 It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well. |
| Scratch a Yale man with both hands and you'll be lucky to find a coast-guard. Usually you find nothing at all. |
| An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards. |
| No such thing as a man willing to be honest - that would be like a blind man willing to see. |
| I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't. |
| Forgotten is forgiven. |
| Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero. |
| Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known. |
| Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. |
| Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint. |
| Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders. |
| Only remember west of the Mississippi it's a little more look, see, act. A little less rationalize, comment, talk. |
| His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours. |
| The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. |
| Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. |
| A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain. |
| I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library. |
| Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle. |
| It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did. |
| All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. |
