"A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts."

"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm."

"It is wise to apply the oil of refined politeness to the mechanisms of friendship."

"Total absence of humor renders life impossible."

"The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time."

"I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer."

"Learning is acquired by reading books, but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading men, and studying all the various facets of them."

"Go and wake up your luck."

"Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place."

"New York: A third-rate Babylon."

"Virtue has never been as respectable as money."

"Where desire writhed there stands a stone; the change was sudden and complete."