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

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

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.

We do not mind our not arriving anywhere nearly so much as our not having any company on the way.

I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.

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.

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