Wit is as infinite as love, and a deal more lasting in its qualities.

It is the steady and merciless increase of occupations, the augmented speed at which we are always trying to live, the crowding of each day with more work than it can profitably hold, which has cost us, among other things, the undisturbed enjoyment of friends. Friendship takes time, and we have no time to give it.

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

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

The well-ordered mind knows the value, no less than the charm, of reticence. The fruit of the tree of knowledge ... falls ripe from its stem; but those who have eaten with sobriety find no need to discuss the processes of digestion.

Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times, because they had nobody to talk about.

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.