Youth is a silly, vapid state, Old age with fears and ills is rife; This simple boon I beg of Fate - A thousand years of Middle Life.

I view askance a book that remains undisturbed for a year. Oughtn’t it to have a ticket of leave? I think I may safely say no bookin my library remains unopened a year at a time, except my own works and Tennyson’s.

When I feel that I’m going to write a detective story, I buy a five pound box of chocolates and a ream of paper. When the candy is all gone and the paper all used up, I know that the book is long enough.

On account of disastrous losses in Wall Street that morning, I had determined to kill myself. I’m not of much account, any way, and I was desperate. I knew Uncle Robert would give me no money to repay my stock losses, for he always thought speculation no better than any other sort of gambling – and it isn’t.

Wall Street. – The abode of the Brokers and the Broke.

A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind’s eye.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn’t.

I’m just the same age I’ve always been.

You wouldn’t believe On All Hallow Eve What lots of fun we can make, With apples to bob, And nuts on the hob, And a ring-and-thimble cake.

Take care of your common sense, and your dignity will take care of itsself.