My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can't.

And it is a good thing that many ideas have a relatively short shelf-life. Some because they are bad, even pernicious ideas: the Master Race, the class struggle, the Oedipus complex, and Socialism are four bad ideas with wretched consequences that come immediately to mind.

Someone – Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? – once said that anything that can be read twice is literature; I would say that anything that bears saying twice is quotable.

Not everyone strives to be fashionable. I don’t, and I believe I succeed.

The best way to ensure that your writing is as good as you can make it is simply to consult your imagination and judgment as you write and take note of whether you are using an expression that has found its way into the stream simply because it’s always there, swirling lifelessly in an eddy, where it was recently deposited by some other writer you have read.

The acquisition of culture requires repose, sitting quietly in a room with a book, or alone with one’s thoughts even any crowded concert or art museum.

Those who consider themselves good teachers probably aren’t.

Envy is never general, but always very particular – at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.

By the way, the secret of speaking French is confidence. Whether you are right or wrong, you don’t hesitate.

My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can’t.