As crowds increase we build our forts of inattention, and the more we talk the easier it is to mean little and listen not at all.

Averageness is a quality we must put up with. Men march toward civilization in column formation, and by the time the van has learned to admire the masters the rear is drawing reluctantly away from the totem pole.

Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.

If a large city can, after intense intellectual efforts, choose for its mayor a man who merely will not steal from it, we consider it a triumph of the suffrage.

Literary people are forever judging the quality of the mind by the turn of expression.

Cast your cares on God; that anchor holds.

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