Wit is a thing capable of proof..

The carefully fostered theory that schoolwork can be made easy and enjoyable breaks down as soon as anything, however trivial, has to be learned..

The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the du….

Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies..

English civilization rests largely upon tea and cricket, with mighty spurts of enjoyment on Derby Day, and at Newmarket..

What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out..

The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation..

No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him..

There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparin….

the most charming thing about youth is the tenacity of its impressions..

Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from ….

It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and ke….

America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation bl….

Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure..

Anyone, however, who has had dealings with dates knows that they are worse than elusive, they are perverse. Events do not happen at the right time, n….

it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing..

When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught..

There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention..

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human hear….

This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home..

Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture..