“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.”

Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.

It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.

I am eighty years old. There seems to be nothing to add to this statement. I have reached the age of undecorated facts – facts that refuse to be softened by sentiment, or confused by nobility of phrase.

The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.

For indeed all that we think so new to-day has been acted over and over again, a shifting comedy, by the women of every century.

Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.

the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring – or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps – lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.

Humor brings insight and tolerance.

There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.

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 people here have been marvelous. The bowl committee has bent over backwards to make sure that our stay is an excellent one. The players have something to do if they choose every day. You couldn’t find a better place.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.

A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or an army, is expected to look backward as well as forward; but he must think only forward.

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

The world is a funny paper read backwards. And that way it isn’t so funny.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret.

When you’ve seen a nude infant doing a backward somersault you know why clothing exists.

They are walking on their pants with their cap on backward, listening to the Enema Man and Snoopy, Snoopy Poop Dog.