"Death is frightening, and so is Eternal Life."

"Sincerity: willingness to spend one's own money."

"Kindness eases everything almost as much as money does."

"Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort."

"Love begins with an image; lust with a sensation."

"Every day begins with an act of courage and hope: getting out of bed."

"Conscious thought is the tidying up at the end."

"Cruelty is softened by fear, not pity."

"Forgiveness is like faith. You have to keep reviving it."

"Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris."

"Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it."

"The man in the street is always a stranger."

"Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences."

"A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude."

"Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking."

"There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them."

"To be successful be ahead of your time, but only a little."

"In bridge clubs and in councils of state, the passions are the same."

"Money: power at its most liquid."

"Mistakes are the only universal form of originality."

"Well-behaved: he always speaks as if his mother might be listening."

"Rereading, we find a new book."

"Young men preen. Old men scheme."

"Preserving tradition has become a nice hobby, like stamp collecting."

"If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting."

"Middle age went by while I was mourning for my lost youth."

"Talk about yourself as much as you like, but do not expect others to listen."

"Children use all their wiles to get their way with adults. Adults do the same with children."

"The wisdom of age: don't stop walking."

"If modesty disappeared, so would exhibitionism."

"Fail, and your friends feel superior. Succeed, and they feel resentful."

"Cure for an obsession: get another one."

"Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered."

"Listening to people keeps them entertained."

"To confer dignity, forgive. To express contempt, forget."

"My thought has been shaped by books; my desires by pictures."

"Women encourage men to be childish, then scold them."

"If beggars do not hate the rest of us, they are even more abject than I had imagined."

"If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation."

"Some loves are like a vice that has ceased to give pleasure."

"I read less and less. I have not forgiven books for their failure to tell me the truth and make me happy."

"No chaos, no creation. Evidence: the kitchen at mealtime."

"Affection reproaches, but does not denounce."

"Innocence: I am only stepping on your face because it lies in my path."

"At sixty, I know little more about wisdom than I did at thirty, but I know a great deal more about folly."

"People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much."

"In every death, a busy world comes to an end."

"Humor does not rescue us from unhappiness, but enables us to move back from it a little."

"Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit."

"The laughter of the aphorism is sometimes triumphant, but seldom carefree."