Humor, warm and all-embracing as the sunshine, bathes its objects in a genial and abiding light.

Irony is an insult conveyed in the form of a compliment.

Of the three prerequisites of genius; the first is soul; the second is soul; and the third is soul.

Character is the spiritual body of the person, and represents the individualization of vital experience, the conversion of unconscious things into self-conscious men.

Everybody knows that fanaticism is religion caricatured; bears, indeed, about the same relation to it that a monkey bears to a man; yet, with many, contempt of fanaticism is received as a sure sign of hostility to religion.

Wit is an unexpected explosion of thought.

Nature and society are so replete with startling contrasts that wit often consists in the mere statement and comparison of facts, as when Hume says that the ancient Muscovites wedded their wives with a whip instead of a ring.