An historian without political passions is as rare as a wasp without a sting.

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

There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.

The gayety of life, like the beauty and the moral worth of life, is a saving grace, which to ignore is folly, and to destroy is crime. There is no more than we need; there is barely enough to go round.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

People with theories of life are, perhaps, the most relentless of their kind, for no time or place is sacred from their devastating elucidations.

Philadelphians are every whit as mediocre as their neighbors, but they seldom encourage each other in mediocrity by giving it a more agreeable name.