“A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.”

The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.

In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.

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.

It is difficult to admonish Frenchmen. Their habit of mind is unfavorable to preachment.

If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.

People with theories of life are, perhaps, the most relentless of their kind, for no time or place is sacred from their devastating elucidations.

The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.

the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.

A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.

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.

Everybody is now so busy teaching that nobody has any time to learn.

I am seventy years old, a gray age weighted with uncompromising biblical allusions. It ought to have a gray outlook, but it hasn’t, because a glint of dazzling sunshine is dancing merrily ahead of me.

The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.

The dog is guided by kindly instinct to the man or woman whose heart is open to his advances. The cat often leaves the friend who courts her, to honor, or to harass, the unfortunate mortal who shudders at her unwelcome caresses.

Abstract art: a construction site for high fashion, for advertising, for furniture.

Each of us is carving a stone, erecting a column, or cutting a piece of stained glass in the construction of something much bigger than ourselves.

We must apply our humble efforts to the construction of a more just and humane world.

Criticism is not construction, it is observation.

In my early 20s I was so miserable doing construction, I wanted something that paid money. I liked nice stuff.

To allow the construction of places of worship other than Islamic ones in Saudi Arabia, it would be like asking the Vatican to build a mosque inside of it.

Looking at certain illuminated corners of or cracks within the mirror, the author can see fragments of an objective reality that comprise the physical universe, social communities, political dynamics,

Where are the numerous constructions erected by Agrippa, of which only the Pantheon remains? Where are the splendorous palaces of the emperors?