In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.

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

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.

The delusions of the past seem fond and foolish. The delusions of the present seem subtle and sane.

The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge ... falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.

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.

Cats, even when robust, have scant liking for the boisterous society of children, and are apt to exert their utmost ingenuity to escape it. Nor are they without adult sympathy in their prejudice.