55 Quotes by Louis Auchincloss

As the classes in modern life come together, we have become much more intensely class conscious. It's a very curious thing. But I deal with human beings with whom I've come in contact and have had a chance to closely observe. Their upper-classness is not a matter of particular fascination for me.

I don't give a damn what people think.

I couldn't bear to see a chapter of the gospel turned into a chapter of Trollope.

I don't know enough about the lower classes to write about them. I don't feel with them, and that could be regarded as a defect, a limitation of my imagination. I could put myself in their position, but not politically. The idea of writing a story or a book about somebody completely devoid of appreciation of anything I care about is completely foreign to me.

In my day, they were not interested in making boys happy. Those schools were made for the types of men who would become quite successful. It was brutal. They are not brutal today. They are country clubs today.

There's no real alternative to what there is.

Decent artists go through bad times but eventually they do get recognized. It's by no means a battle lost. Yet.

Maybe when I'm dead, I'll be forgiven, but I'm afraid I'll also be forgotten.

Consider, children ... the pain of touching the tip of your finger to your mother's stove, even for a fraction of a second. That is an experience which most of you have suffered. Now try to imagine that pain, not simply on a fingertip but spread over the whole surface of your body, and not for a mere second, but everlastingly. That, children, is hellfire.