"If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: 'It seemed a good idea at the time.'"

"What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find."

"Anxiety is interest paid on trouble before it is due."

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."

"Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves."

"There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead."

"All excess is ill, but drunkenness is of the worst sort. It spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans men. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous and bad."

"Maybe you have to know darkness before you can appreciate the light."

"The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one."

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."