It is a luxury to be understood.

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.

Words pay no debts.

It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.

The newspaper is the natural enemy of the book, as the whore is of the decent woman.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands, and goes to work.

History does not merely touch on language, but takes place in it.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation.

Language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.