“Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.”

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.

No man pursues what he has at hand. No man recognizes the need of pursuit until that which he desires has escaped him.

It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.