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

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.

What puzzles most of us are the things which have been left in the movies rather than the things which have been taken out.

It is not the office of a novelist to show us how to behave ourselves; it is not the business of fiction to teach us anything.

Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.

to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.

Believers in political faith-healing enjoy a supreme immunity from doubt.

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives.

fair play is less characteristic of groups than of individuals.

History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.

There is a vast deal of make-believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life, and the barefoot boy, and the mountain girl.

The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.

Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old; who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before.

There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.

There is a secret and wholesome conviction in the heart of every man or woman who has written a book that it should be no easy matter for an intelligent reader to lay down that book unfinished. There is a pardonable impression among reviewers that half an hour in its company is sufficient.