It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.

History is, and has always been trameled by facts. It may ignore some and deny others; but it cannot accommodate itself unreservedly to theories; it cannot be stripped of things evidenced in favor of things surmised.

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

if a man be discreet enough to take to hard drinking in his youth, before his general emptiness is ascertained, his friends invariably credit him with a host of shining qualities which, we are given to understand, lie balked and frustrated by his one unfortunate weakness.

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.

A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.

There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.