If I can fool a bug... I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.

The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.

Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who knows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised.

Why is it, do you suppose, that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?

Wilbur didn't want food, he wanted love.

Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process.

Oh, I never look under the hood.