Necessity knows no Sunday.

There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.

It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.

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.

Conversation in its happiest development is a link, equally exquisite and adequate, between mind and mind, a system by which men approach one another with sympathy and enjoyment, a field for the finest amenities of civilization, for the keenest and most intelligent display of social activity. It is also our solace, our inspiration, and our most rational pleasure. It is a duty we owe to one another; it is our common debt to humanity.

Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.

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