Discussion without asperity, sympathy with fusion, gayety unracked by too abundant jests, mental ease in approaching one another; these are the things which give a pleasant smoothness to the rough edge of life.
if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.
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.
The necessity of knowing a little about a great many things is the most grievous burden of our day. It deprives us of leisure on the one hand, and of scholarship on the other.
If we go to church we are confronted with a system of begging so complicated and so resolute that all other demands sink into insignificance by its side.
A man who listens because he has nothing to say can hardly be a source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas.
It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.
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.
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 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.