A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a little patronage more so.
I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.
Never delay kissing a pretty girl or opening a bottle of whiskey
No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.
All cowardice comes from not truly loving, or at least, not loving well.
You know that fiction, prose rather, is possibly the roughest trade of all in writing. You do not have the reference, the old important reference. You have the sheet of blank paper, the pencil, and the obligation to invent truer than things can be true. You have to take what is not palpable and make it completely palpable and also have it seem normal and so that it can become a part of experience of the person who reads it.
The world breaks everyone or nearly everyone, of their childish illusions, assumptions and wishes, often painfully and afterwards due to the personal growth in practical experience, insight and the resulting wisdom many are strong at the broken places just like mended broken bones often are, and some people even have the great insight to be grateful for the purifying fire.
. . . there is much truth in the Italian saying, 'Make yourselves sheep, and the wolves will eat you. '
Pleasure, that immortal essence, the beauteous bead sparkling in the cup, effervesces soon and subsides.
I’m never wrong? Who besides Republican presidents and evil masterminds can say that with a straight face?
I think that marriage is, dare I say it, between a man and a woman, hopefully for life and there are all sorts of other relationships which should be acknowledged and recognised, but I don't know that they can be recognised as marriage.