“An appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice.”

The audience is the controlling factor in the actor’s life. It is practically infallible, since there is no appeal from its verdict. It is a little like a supreme court composed of irresponsible minors.

It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.

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.

Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.

The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.

There was no escape from the letter-writer who, a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five years ago, captured a coveted correspondent. It would have been as easy to shake off an octopus or a boa-constrictor.

Like simplicity and candor, and other much-commented qualities, enthusiasm is charming until we meet it face to face, and cannot escape from its charm.

The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world’s mirth.

The most charming thing about youth is the tenacity of its impressions.

Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.

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.

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.

Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.

People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained.

As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind.

An appreciation of prose is learned, not instinctive. It is an acquired taste, like Scotch whisky.

Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state–it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.

There are two primary ways in which mans relates himself to the world that surround him: manipulation and appreciation .

Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival.

Neither the praise nor the blame is our own.