We always carry out by committee anything in which any one of us alone would be too reasonable to persist.

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

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.

Fill an author with a titanic fame and you do not make him titanic; you often merely burst him.

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.

Politics is a place of humble hopes and strangely modest requirements, where all are good who are not criminal and all are wise who are not ridiculously otherwise.

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