Which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?

Every governmental institution has been a standing testimony to the harmonic destiny of society, a standing proof that the life of man is destined for peace and amity, instead of disorder and contention.

The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.

It exhibits the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.

Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.

Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be . . .