The worst in life, we are told, is compatible with the best in art. So too the worst in life is compatible with the best in humour.

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

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.

Every true American likes to think in terms of thousands and millions. The word 'million' is probably the most pleasure-giving vocable in the language.

[Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote more letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, nearly blinded himself in deciphering the two volumes of undated correspondence which were printed in 1810. Two more followed in 1813, after which the gallant Baron either died at his post or was smitten with despair; for sixty-eight cases of letters lay undisturbed ... 'Les morts n'écrivent point,' said Madame de Maintenon hopefully; but of what benefit is this inactivity, when we still continue to receive their letters?

For my part, the good novel of character is the novel I can always pick up; but the good novel of incident is the novel I can never lay down.

No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.