I wonder what especial sanctity attaches itself to fifteen minutes. It is always the maximum and the minimum of time which will enable us to acquire languages, etiquette, personality, oratory ... One gathers that twelve minutes a day would be hopelessly inadequate, and twenty minutes a wasteful and ridiculous excess.

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.

Friendship takes time.

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.

A man who owns a dog is, in every sense of the words, its master; the term expresses accurately their mutual relations. But it is ridiculous when applied to the limited possession of a cat.

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

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.