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

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

Wit is a thing capable of proof.

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.

A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.

it is not every tourist who bubbles over with mirth, and that unquenchable spirit of humor which turns a trial into a blessing.

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.