You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk.

If he dropped a pun or a platitude into the conversation, it was just as if he had dropped a plate-there would be a moment of frozen silence, then the talk would go on as before.

With extramarital courtship, the deception was prolonged where it had been ephemeral, necessary where it had been frivolous, conspiratorial where it had been lonely.

The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air.

The happy ending is our national belief.

We are a nation of twenty million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub.

Driving a car, you are in danger of killing; walking or standing, of being killed.

A beggar woman who stands soliciting in front of Palazzo Strozzi, when offered alms a second time in the same day, absently, by another Florentine, refuses: "No. You gave me before."

He was deferential, ingratiating, concerned for your pleasure, like a waiter with a tray of French pastry in his hand.

If you talked or laughed in church, told lies, had impure thoughts or conversations, you were bad; if you obeyed your parents or guardians, went to confession and communion regularly, said prayers for the dead, you were good.