Insensibility, of all kinds, and on all occasions, most moves my imperial displeasure

I am ashamed of confessing that I have nothing to confess.

Travelling is the ruin of all happiness. There's no looking at a building here after seeing Italy.

But if the young are never tired of erring in conduct, neither are the older in erring of judgment.

Credulity is the sister of innocence.

I wish the opera was every night. It is, of all entertainments, the sweetest and most delightful. Some of the songs seemed to melt my very soul.

to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.

Nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman; it is at once the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things.

A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.

I cannot sleep - great joy is as restless as sorrow.

A little alarm now and then keeps life from stagnation.

You don't get to be a keeper of the faith without being a keeper of your brother.

But when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine.

There is no substitute for books in the life of a child. (1952)

If you ask an introvert a question, wait until she thinks about it. Introverts think before speaking, not through speaking. If you want to get to the good stuff, you need to slow down.

When the best leader's work is done the people say, 'We did it ourselves.'

Do what you do with love, and success is a natural symptom.

Superstition changes a man to a beast, fanaticism makes him a wild beast, and despotism a beast of burden.

I would never have been a novelist without working as a psychologist...it was a great education in human nature.

It's only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like.

The body is the soul's poor house or home, whose ribs the laths are and whose flesh the loam.