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

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor.

Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.

What strange impulse is it which induces otherwise truthful people to say they like music when they do not, and thus expose themselves to hours of boredom?

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