“The essence of humor is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind.”

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.

The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.

A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candor.

To have given pleasure to one human being is a recollection that sweetens life.

Guests are the delight of leisure, and the solace of ennui.

It takes time and trouble to persuade ourselves that the things we want to do are the things we ought to do.

A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble.

Traveling is, and has always been, more popular than the traveler.

Who that has plodded on to middle age would take back upon his shoulders ten of the vanished years, with their mingled pleasures and pains? Who would return to the youth he is forever pretending to regret?

This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.

Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

The man who never tells an unpalatable truth ‘at the wrong time’ (the right time has yet to be discovered) is the man whose success in life is fairly well assured.

Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.

Men who believe that, through some exceptional grace or good fortune, they have found God, feel little need of culture.

When I use the word ‘healing’, by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we’re very good at handling, but there’s always a sense of the violation. ‘Why me?’ ‘

I am not a Hindu, Nor a Muslim, I am this body, a play Of five elements a drama Of the spirit dancing With joy and sorrow.

Hence the new age will be an age less masculine, and more permeated with the feminine ideals

A nation must be embraced, rehabilitated and expressed as a tangible sign of human creativity and as an integral element of mankinds heritage.

Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of this material world

It is energy – the central element of which is will – that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action.

Everything destroyed is either resolved into the elements from which it came, or else vanishes into not-being. If things are resolved into the elements from which they came, then there will be others: else how did they come into being at all?

This was pointed out to me by somebody who referred to the paintings of Rembrandt and his use of light: some elements are highlighted while others are obscured or even pushed back into the dark.