The choice of a topic which will bear analysis and support enthusiasm, is essential to the enjoyment of conversation.

There is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.

If history in the making be a fluid thing, it swiftly crystallizes.

If everybody floated with the tide of talk, placidity would soon end in stagnation. It is the strong backward stroke which stirs the ripples, and gives animation and variety.

It is because of our unassailable enthusiasm, our profound reverence for education, that we habitually demand of it the impossible. The teacher is expected to perform a choice and varied series of miracles.

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

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.