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 dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.
What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!
the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring - or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps - lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.
whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.
The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge ... falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.
Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.
The pitfall of the feminist is the belief that the interests of men and women can ever be severed; that what brings sufferings to the one can leave the other unscathed.
I am eighty years old. There seems to be nothing to add to this statement. I have reached the age of undecorated facts - facts that refuse to be softened by sentiment, or confused by nobility of phrase.
Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.
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 no introduction or demonstration at our hands.
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.