“We may fail of our happiness, strive we ever so bravely; but we are less likely to fail if we measure with judgement our chances and our capabilities.”

real letter-writing … is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.

History is not written in the interests of morality.

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.

Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.

Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.

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.

Humor hardens the heart, at least to the point of sanity.

The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp.

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.

When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.

Sensuality, too, which used to show itself course, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism.

People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.

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.

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.

A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.

There is an optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates unworthiness.

I like touring; I live on the road, more or less.

When I arrived on the planet, there were only two billion. Wildlife was more abundant, we were less so; now the situation is reversed.

Physiologically less violent and psychologically more suitable to a concrete type of mind.

If produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which the angles are less than two right angles.

Better balance, less pain and less restless leg syndrome.

All the instruments of percussion known to European science are essentially nonmusical and can only be tolerated in open air music or in large orchestras where a little noise more or less makes no difference.

Your workers don’t want to be paid less, so to maintain profits, you increase your prices. That’s inflation.

That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines.