The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.

It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.

In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them.

It is not when he is working in his office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, 'Life is beautiful.'

True peace of mind comes from accepting the worst. Psychologically, I think, it means a release of energy.

Such religion as there can be in modern life, every individual will have to salvage from the churches for himself.

How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.

One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, 'It was a good show,' when the curtain falls.