“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.”

There is no liberal education for the under-languaged.

The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.

Where there is no temptation, there is no virtue.

Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.

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 human race may be divided into people who love cats and people who hate them; the neutrals being few in numbers, and, for intellectual and moral reasons, not worth considering.

There is something frightful in being required to enjoy and appreciate all masterpieces; to read with equal relish Milton, and Dante, and Calderon, and Goethe, and Homer, and Scott, and Voltaire, and Wordsworth, and Cervantes, and Molière, and Swift.

The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.

Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the same in all patients.

We cannot hope to scale great moral heights by ignoring petty obligations.

For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.

Wit is artificial; humor is natural. Wit is accidental; humor is inevitable. Wit is born of conscious effort; humor, of the allotted ironies of fate. Wit can be expressed only in language; humor can be developed sufficiently in situation.

In the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that most comfortable vanity that whispers in our ears that failures are not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that we must rise or fall upon our own merits; that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means ruin

Friendship takes time.

We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.

We cannot learn to love other tourists,-the laws of nature forbid it,-but, meditating soberly on the impossibility of their loving us, we may reach some common platform of tolerance, some common exchange of recognition and amenity.

Learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate your self. Body and mind of themselves will drop away, and your original face will be manifest.

The people here have been marvelous. The bowl committee has bent over backwards to make sure that our stay is an excellent one. The players have something to do if they choose every day. You couldn’t find a better place.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.

A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or an army, is expected to look backward as well as forward; but he must think only forward.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn’t so funny.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret.

When you’ve seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.