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.

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.

The world is a play that would not be worth seeing if we knew the plot.

I know of no more disagreeable sensation than to be left feeling generally angry without anybody in particular to be angry at.

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.

Sin in this country has been always said to be rather calculating than impulsive.

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