The trouble with our age is all signposts and no destination.

It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business.

The moving van is a symbol of more than our restlessness, it is the most conclusive evidence possible of our progress.

In the history of mankind, fanaticism has caused more harm than vice.

This is, i think, very much the Age of Anxiety, the age of the neurosis, because along with so much that weighs on our minds there is perhaps even more that grates on our nerves.

We are neurotically haunted today by the imminence, and by the ignominy, of failure. We know at how frightening a cost one succeeds: to fail is something too awful to think about.

A great maxim of personal responsibility and mature achievement: Do it yourself is now the enthroned cliche for being occupied with nonessentials.

One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it makes us vain, in fact, of our modesty.

Life for most of us is full of steep stairs to go up and later, shaky stairs to totter down; and very early in the history of stairs must have come the invention of bannisters.

Coyness is a rather comically pathetic fault, a miscalculation in which, by trying to veil the ego, we let it appear stark naked.

The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.

The technique of winning is so shoddy, the terms of winning are so ignoble, the tenure of winning is so brief; and the specter of the has-been-a shameful rather than a pitiable sight today-brings a sudden chill even to our sunlit moments.

One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame, we have killed off so much real shame as well.

The materialistic idealism that governs American life, that on the one hand makes a chariot of every grocery wagon, and on the other a mere hitching post of every star, lets every man lead a very enticing double life.

True individualists tend to be quite unobservant; it is the snob, the would be sophisticate, the frightened conformist, who keeps a fascinated or worried eye on what is in the wind.

The Englishman wants to be recognized as a gentleman, or as some other suitable species of human being, the American wants to be considered a good guy.

Doubtless a good general rule for close friendships, where confidences are freely exchanged, is that what one is not informed about, one may not inquire about.

We might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others.

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it make us vain, in fact, of our modesty.