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.

For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.

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

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

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

History is not written in the interests of morality.

If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.