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

Men will confess to treason, murder, arson, false teeth, or a wig. How many of them will own up to a lack of humor?

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

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.

Distaste sounds more emphatic when expressed as moral disapproval. With most of us the moral counterblast is nothing more than the angry rendering of a yawn.

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