By providing cheap and wholesome reading for the young, we have partly succeeded in driving from the field that which was positively bad; yet nothing is easier than to overdo a reformation, and, through the characteristic indulgence of American parents, children are drugged with a literature whose chief merit is its harmlessness.
Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.
I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.
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.
Cats, even when robust, have scant liking for the boisterous society of children, and are apt to exert their utmost ingenuity to escape it. Nor are they without adult sympathy in their prejudice.
abroad it is our habit to regard all other travelers in the light of personal and unpardonable grievances. They are intruders into our chosen realms of pleasure, they jar upon our sensibilities, they lessen our meager share of comforts, they are everywhere in our way, they are always an unnecessary feature in the landscape.
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.
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 comparing of recollections with realities.
Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word 'million' is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.
A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master; the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.
The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.
The cure-alls of the present day are infinitely various and infinitely obliging. Applied psychology, autosuggestion, and royal roads to learning or to wealth are urged upon us by kindly, if not altogether disinterested, reformers. Simple and easy systems for the dissolution of discord and strife; simple and easy systems for the development of personality and power. Booklets of counsel on 'How to Get What We Want,' which is impossible; booklets on 'Visualization,' warranted to make us want what we get, which is ignoble.