The friendships of nations, built on common interests, cannot survive the mutability of those interests.

This is the sphinx of the hearthstone, the little god of domesticity, whose presence turns a house into a home.

Letters form a by-path of literature, a charming, but occasional, retreat for people of cultivated leisure.

Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

It was hard to speed the male child up the stony heights of erudition, but it was harder still to check the female child at the crucial point, and keep her tottering decorously behind her brother.

Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.