“There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.”

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.

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.

Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.

Ah, yet, e’er I descend to th’ grave, May I a small House and a large Garden have. And a few Friends, and many Books both true

If you want a place in the sun, you have got to put up with a few blisters.

To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words.

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, ‘Give, give.’

Such innovations have given Dubai a competitive edge and an accelerated growth rate that few could match.

Unfortunately, cinema critics are very few in America, 400-500 people, but there are more critics of Iran.

I’d like to set things straight, a few more people should be pulling their weight.