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.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

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

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.

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.

Science may carry us to Mars, but it will leave the earth peopled as ever by the inept.