Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.

By rights, satire is a lonely and introspective occupation, for nobody can describe a fool to the life without much patient self-inspection.

When temptations march monotonously in regiments, one waits for to pass.

There ought to be some sign in a book about man, that the writer knows thoroughly one man at least.

In middle life politics are not a mental acquisition; they are a temperament.

Talk ought always to run obliquely, not nose to nose with no chance of mental escape.