A real dog, beloved and therefore pampered by his mistress, is a lamentable spectacle. He suffers from fatty degeneration of his moral being.

whereas the dog strives to lessen the distance between himself and man, seeks ever to be intelligent and intelligible, and translates into looks and actions the words he cannot speak, the cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

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.

The perfectly natural thing to do with an unreadable book is to give it away; and the publication, for more than a quarter of a century, of volumes which fulfilled this one purpose and no other is a pleasant proof, if proof were needed, of the business principles which underlay the enlightened activity of publishers.

The party which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity in the party which is in; and the party which is in sees nothing but greed and animosity in the party which is out.

Miserliness is the one vice that grows stronger with increasing years. It yields its sordid pleasures to the end.