The cat makes himself the companion of your hours of solitude, melancholy and toil.

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal... one that does not place its affections thoughtlessly.

Eyes so transparent that through them the soul is seen.

Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!

The purity of a person's heart can be quickly measured by how they regard animals

To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.

Yes I have loved, as no one on earth ever loved, with an insensate and furious love, so violent that I wonder it did not break my heart

The most fitting occupation for a civilized man is to do nothing.

Modesty was made for the ugly.

Books follow morals, and not morals books.

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution.

A prose that is altogether alive demands something of the reader that the ordinary novel reader is not prepared to give.

Sometimes the real action in a conversation takes place in the pauses, when nothing at all is being said.

Am I then more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American Ground?

The whole thing's illusion, [Jacob], and there's nothing wrong with that. It's what people want from us. It's what they expect.

Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon, Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run, The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically.

That propaganda is good which leads to success, and that is bad which fails to achieve the desired result. It is not propaganda’s task to be intelligent, its task is to lead to success.

People take things at face value on social media. Earnestness is the assumption.

Comedy is exaggerated realism. It can be stretched to the almost ludicrous, but it must always be believable.

How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved.