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

Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.

It is not depravity that afflicts the human race so much as a general lack of intelligence.

Innovations to which we are not committed are illuminating things.

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.

Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.

The soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.