Our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage.

Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process.

Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.

the labors of the true critic are more essential to the author, even, than to the reader.

the pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring - or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps - lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.

It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.

The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.