Who are we really? Combinations of common chemicals that perform mechanical actions for a few years before crumbling back into the original components? Fresh new souls, drawn at random for some celestial cupboard where God keeps an unending supply?Or the same soul, immortal and eternal, refurbished and reused through endless lives, by that thrifty Housekeeper? In Her wisdom and benevolence She wipes off the memory slates, as part of the cleaning process, because if we could remember all the things we have experienced in earlier lives, we might object to risking it again.

Reputations are shaped not by facts but by prejudices.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be the respected patriarch of an ordinary English family." "Very boring, Emerson.

No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.

Another dead body. Every year it is the same. Every year, another dead body.

When emotion supersedes reason ... gullibility must follow.

The opportunity to lecture had restored my good humor.