A beautifully constructed borshch, such as you are going to experience presently, ought not only to banish conversation but almost to annihilate thought.
Why are women so fond of raking up the past? They're as bad as tailors, who invariably remember what you owe them for a suit long after you've ceased to wear it.
Oysters are more beautiful than any religion... There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster.
Confront a child, a puppy, and a kitten with a sudden danger; the child will turn instinctively for assistance, the puppy will grovel in abject submission, the kitten will brace its tiny body for a frantic resistance.
There may have been disillusionments in the lives of the medieval saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets.