But self-satisfaction, if as buoyant as gas, has an ugly trick of collapsing when full blown, and facts are stony things that refuse to melt away in the sunshine of a smile.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.

There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania.

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

It is not begging but the beggar, who has forfeited favor with the elect.

Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about.

The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.

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. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.

If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.

Now the pessimist proper is the most modest of men. ... under no circumstances does he presume to imagine that he, a mere unit of pain, can in any degree change or soften the remorseless words of fate.

Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer's reputation.

The tea-hour is the hour of peace ... strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle -- a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat.

No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.

It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.

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 heart.

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 well assured.

It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.

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

Our belief in education is unbounded, our reverence for it is unfaltering, our loyalty to it is unshaken by reverses. Our passionate desire, not so much to acquire it as to bestow it, is the most animated of American traits.