“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?”

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.

An appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice.

It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

English civilization rests largely upon tea and cricket, with mighty spurts of enjoyment on Derby Day, and at Newmarket.

I tell you, the paparazzi would not be sitting outside if they realized I was the most boring person in Hollywood.

You need to let little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.

Some people think, if you’re in the public eye, that you have to have an answer for everything and it has to be boring.

People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting.

I’m a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires.

If investing is entertaining, if you’re having fun, you’re probably not making any money. Good investing is boring.

I never really studied business in school. I kind of wish I had, but how boring is that?

Remember that, however patient your study, you will never in adult life learn any language perfectly; the best you can hope for is to be a bore.