No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.

While art may instruct as well as please, it can nevertheless be true art without instructing, but not without pleasing.

The English possess too many agreeable traits to permit them to be as much disliked as they think and hope they are.

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

Whatever has "wit enough to keep it sweet" defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.

Conversation in its happiest development is a link, equally exquisite and adequate, between mind and mind, a system by which men approach one another with sympathy and enjoyment, a field for the finest amenities of civilization, for the keenest and most intelligent display of social activity. It is also our solace, our inspiration, and our most rational pleasure. It is a duty we owe to one another; it is our common debt to humanity.

the tea-hour is the hour of peace ... strife is lost in the hissing of the kettle - a tranquilizing sound, second only to the purring of a cat.