New York has always prided itself on its bad manners. That is the real source of our strength.

Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so.

I see no present solution of a great and intricate problem but that the rich should realize their duty to the poor.

Has it ever occurred to you, that the rich are at the mercy of the poor, not the poor at that of the rich? Who permits us to be rich if not the poor?

California has all the beauties of youth as well as its idiocies and vices...

Plot and melodrama were in every life; in some so briefly as hardly to be recognized, in others-in that of certain men and women in the public eye, for instance-they were almost in the nature of a continuous performance.

If you can’t get the very best in this world, take nothing.

It took me years to learn that character is fate and that no one can be made over.

A little superstition is a good thing to keep in one’s bag of precautions.

No country can reach a high stage of civilization without a leisure class...