real letter-writing ... is founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that one human being has of another.

It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.

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

Why do so many ingenious theorists give fresh reasons every year for the decline of letter writing, and why do they assume, in derision of suffering humanity, that it has declined? They lament the lack of leisure, the lack of sentiment ... They talk of telegrams, and telephones, and postal cards, as if any discovery of science, any device of civilization, could eradicate from the human heart that passion for self-expression which is the impelling force of letters.

There is always a secret irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join

An appreciation of words is so rare that everybody naturally thinks he possesses it, and this universal sentiment results in the misuse of a material whose beauty enriches the loving student beyond the dreams of avarice.

to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offense, it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our path.