Picking other people's brains is an art worth cultivating.

Objectivity? I've always had an objective.

When is conduct a crime, and when is a crime not a crime? When "Somebody Up There" - a monarch, a dictator, a Pope, a legislator - so decrees.

Enemies are, to me, as important as friends in my life, and when they die I mourn their passing.

It is somehow reassuring to discover that the word travel is derived from travail, denoting the pains of childbirth.

Funeralese has had its ups and downs. The word 'morticians,' first used in Embalmers Monthly for February, 1895, was barred by the Chicago Tribune in 1932, 'not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven't the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.

[On the United States:] A nation which does not appreciate that the simple elocution exercise 'Merry Mary married hairy Harry' contains not one but three vowel sounds.