When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half.
The universality of a custom is pledge of its worth.
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion. Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed.
People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.
To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
You're allowed to grant people into the darkness, but you must allow them to come out again.
In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is very high; in reality, very low.
I was like one of those people who is allergic to the twentieth century. . . I'd been brought up to think there was some order to things, but there was no safety net. Doctors accused me of being mad.