In 2002, a lot of the pundits didn't get the off-year elections right. In 2004, a lot of people thought I was going down eight days before the election.
Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want.
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
You have to transmit to them what its like being in the theater. And it has to come from somewhere inside you and not by being like what somebody did last year.
If anything affects your eye, you hasten to have it removed; if anything affects your mind, you postpone the cure for a year.
[Lat., Quae laedunt oculum festinas demere; si quid
Est animum, differs curandi tempus in annum.]
I can imagine in years to come that my papers and memorabilia, my journals and letters, will find themselves always in the company of people who care about many of the things I do.
For 35 years I was a writer. I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren’t funny. Some of them weren’t appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that.
I stood on a tower in the wet, And New Year and Old Year met, And winds were roaring and blowing: And I said, "O years, that meet in tears, Have ye aught that is worth the knowing? Science enough and exploring, Wanderers coming and going, Matter enough for deploring, But aught that is worth the knowing?
Everyone seems to assume that the unscrupulous parts of journalism will be the frivolous or jocular parts. This is against all ethical experience. Jokes are generally honest. Complete solemnity is almost always dishonest. The writer of the snippet merely refers to a frivolous and fugitive fact in a frivolous and fugitive way. The writer of the leading article has to write about a fact he has known for 20 minutes as though he has studied it for 20 years.