A good rule for writers: do not explain overmuch.
But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.
Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.
You Europeans know nothing about America. Because we amass large fortunes you think we care for nothing but money. We are nothing for it; the moment we have it we spend it, sometimes well, sometimes ill, but we spend it. Money is nothing to us; it's merely the symbol of success. We are the greatest idealists in the world; I happen to think that we've set our ideal on the wrong objects; I happen to think that the greatest ideal man can set before himself is self-perfection.
The great trues are too important to be new.
As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only excuse that offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer whose thoughts should more properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial concerns of imaginary people.
A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her...but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices he makes on her account.
I'm only twenty-five. If I've made a mistake I have time to correct it.
The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried [phrase-making] to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment’s reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication.
Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experience he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey.
The best style is the style you don't notice.
The crown of literature is poetry.
The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.
Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.
It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
I daresay one profits more by the mistakes one makes off one's own bat than by doing the right thing on somebody's else advice.
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
Its a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, few are chosen.
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos.
I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues.
Art, if it is to be reckoned as one of the great values of life, must teach man humility, tolerance, wisdom and magnanimity. The value of art is not beauty, but right action.
No man in his heart is quite so cynical as a well-bred woman.
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
It is astonishing how many books I find there is no need for me to read at all.
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