Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.
When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.
Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.
Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.
Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.
It is difficult to admonish Frenchmen. Their habit of mind is unfavorable to preachment.
the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.
Neatness of phrase is so closely akin to wit that it is often accepted as its substitute.
A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.
People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.
Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.
It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.
It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.
People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.
The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.
To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate.
The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.
The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.
There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.
The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.
Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times because they had nobody to talk about.
Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about.
Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.
Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.
It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.
The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.
People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism.
Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.
This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.
Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.
Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.
It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.
The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp.
The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.
The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.
It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.
No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.
Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.
While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.
It is as impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.
English civilization rests largely upon tea and cricket, with mighty spurts of enjoyment on Derby Day, and at Newmarket.
A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.
What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out.
A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever, and generally stopping before it gets there.
Too much rigidity on the part of teachers should be followed by a brisk spirit of insubordination on the part of the taught.
There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.
It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.
it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.
It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.
For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.