[Emerson] had a gift of the picturesque phrase, but too often it is empty of meaning. He is a nimble skater who cuts elegant and complicated figures on a surface of frozen platitudes. Perhaps he would...
You should read Spanish,' he said. 'It is a noble tongue. It has not the mellifluousness of Italian--Italian is the language of tenors and organ-grinders--but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like...
You know, when one's in love,' I said, 'and things go all wrong, one's terribly unhappy and one thinks one won't ever get over it. But you'll be astounded to learn what the sea will do.'What do you me...
Women are strange little beasts,' he said to Dr. Coutras. 'You can treat them like dogs, you can beat them till your arm aches, and still they love you.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'Of course, it is o...
When my obituary notice at last appears in The Times, and they say: ‘What, I thought he died years ago,’ my ghost will gently chuckle.
When he sacrifices himself man for a moment is greater than God, for how can God, infinite and omnipotent, sacrifice himself? At best he can only sacrifice his only begotten son.
What he taught was very simple. He taught that we are all greater than we know and that wisdom is the means to freedom. He taught that it is not essential to salvation to retire from the world, but on...
We were staggered and immediately on the defensive, for she looked intellectual, and it made us feel shy.
We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbors. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs...
Thing I've always noticed, people don't commit suicide for love, as you'd expect, that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they haven't got any money.
There is only one way to win hearts and that is to make oneself like unto those of whom one would be loved.
There are many foolish people in the world and when a man in a rather high position puts on no frills, slaps them on the back, and tells them he'll do anything in the world for them, they are very lik...
The wise always use a number of ready-made phrases (at the moment I write ‘nobody’s business’ is the most common), popular adjectives (like ‘divine’ or ‘shy-making’), verbs that you only know the mean...
The thought of my chief inspector reading The Waste Land filled me with pleasure. Suddenly he pushed a snapshot toward me.
The past was finished; let the dead bury their dead.
The experience of life shows that people are constantly doing things which must lead to disaster, and yet by some chance manage to evade the result of their folly.
The devil is a good actor, smiled Domingo.
The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistical and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them , for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure mak...
The bright hopes of youth had to be paid for at such a bitter price of disillusionment.
The answer was obvious. Life had no meaning. On the earth, satellite of a star speeding through space, living things had arisen under the influence of conditions which were part of the planet's histor...