We have but the memories of past good cheer, we have but the echoes of departed laughter. In vain we look and listen for the mirth that has died away. In vain we seek to question the gray ghosts of old-time revelers.

It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.

There is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.

People with theories of life are, perhaps, the most relentless of their kind, for no time or place is sacred from their devastating elucidations.

There is no illusion so permanent as that which enables us to look backward with complacency; there is no mental process so deceptive as the comparing of recollections with realities.