“Whatever has “wit enough to keep it sweet” defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.”

It is bad enough to be bad, but to be bad in bad taste is unpardonable.

real letter-writing … is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.

History is not written in the interests of morality.

Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.

Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.

Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.

Discussion without asperity, sympathy with fusion, gayety unracked by too abundant jests, mental ease in approaching one another; these are the things which give a pleasant smoothness to the rough edge of life.

Humor hardens the heart, at least to the point of sanity.

The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp.

the tea-hour is the hour of peace … strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle – a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat.

When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.

Sensuality, too, which used to show itself course, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism.

People who pin their faith to a catchword never feel the necessity of understanding anything.

if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature, and is purifying only in so far as there is a natural and unschooled goodness in the human heart.

A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.

Leaders in Africa are so corrupt that we are certain if we put dogs in uniforms and put guns on their shoulders, we’d be hard put to distinguish them.

Implementing God’s laws alone, which no-one has the power to change. So I say to you: if you really want to root out corruption now so widespread on God’s earth.

And that the Scriptures, though not everywhere Free from corruption, or entire, or clear, Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, entire In all things which our needful faith require.

In youth, in middle age, and now after many battles, I find nothing in me but corruption.

I will be happy with certainly when the corruption index improve.

The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.

You need a high degree of corruption or a very big heart to love absolutely everything.

When the State is corrupt, then the laws are most multiplied.