Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.

In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.

It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.

The gospel of cheerfulness, I had almost said the gospel of amusement, is preached by people who lack experience to people who lack vitality. There is a vague impression that the world would be a good world if it were only happy, that it would be happy if it were amused, and that it would be amused if plenty of artificial recreation - that recreation for which we are now told every community stands responsible - were provided for its entertainment.

A vast deal of ingenuity is wasted every year in evoking the undesirable, in the careful construction of objects which burden life. Frankenstein was a large rather than an isolated example.

the most charming thing about youth is the tenacity of its impressions.

There are few things more wearisome in a fairly fatiguing life than the monotonous repetition of a phrase which catches and holds the public fancy by virtue of its total lack of significance.