“Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.”

“Against fashion, even tyrants struggle in vain, she thought.”

“The common practice of keeping up appearances with society is a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain.”

“We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains -- chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment -- in a word, Circumstance -- and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain.”

“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”

“To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.”