“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.”

The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.

What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!

There is a natural limit to the success we wish our friends, even when we have spurred them on their way.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the infernal smugness which makes the lover of the country insupportable.

The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.

What strange impulse is it which induces otherwise truthful people to say they like music when they do not, and thus expose themselves to hours of boredom?

Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word ‘million’ is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.

Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge … falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.

Woman is quick to revere genius, but in her secret soul she seldom loves it.

The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.

It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.

The party which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity in the party which is in; and the party which is in sees nothing but greed and animosity in the party which is out.

All that has really happened is that Al Qaeda has escaped from Afghanistan come into Pakistan, got in touch with their contacts and friends.

It is the contact with great masses of people who are seeking fir the moment only well-being and not salvation that weakens and devalues the indigenous population.

It is not the contact with an essentially foreign population that corrupts the inhabitants of the great foreign resorts.

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.

That’s why I like to work with the photogram, because the contact with what is represented is actual.

When you make genuine contact with your inner Spirit, there is an inner joy, an inner peace, that takes over.

When we have an inner initiation into pure love, we are in contact with our true nature. Judgment of ourselves and others disappears. Compassionate, discerning wisdom then enters the equation in all of our relationships.

When we have an inner initiation into pure love, we are in contact with our true nature.