Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word 'million' is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the languag….

There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, a….

[Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote more letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, n….

The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane..

the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader..

fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals..

The man who never tells an unpalatable truth 'at the wrong time' (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly….

When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind….

To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life..

The cure-alls of the present day are infinitely various and infinitely obliging. Applied psychology, autosuggestion, and royal roads to learning or t….

Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end..

Whatever has "wit enough to keep it sweet" defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs….

Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt..

The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are..

The great dividing line between books that are made to be read and books that are made to be bought is not the purely modern thing it seems. We can t….

Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the ….

The gayety of life, like the beauty and the moral worth of life, is a saving grace, which to ignore is folly, and to destroy is crime. There is no mo….

Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate.….

In the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that most comfortable vanity that whispers in our ears that failures are not faults! Now we….

Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things..

The party which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity in the party which is in; and the party which is in sees nothing but greed and animosity….