What all great teachers appear to have in common is love of their subject, an obvious satisfaction in rousing this love in their students, and an ability to convince them that what they are being taught is deadly serious

Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.

I am not merely a habitual quoter but an incorrigible one. I am, I may as well face it, more quotatious than an old stock-market ticker-tape machine, except that you can't unplug me.

What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps mostof all, ideally, what is wanted is a comfortable background, a breathing space of intermission between the intensities of private life and the calculations of public life.

A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it.

No one has really ever defined what a friend is.

That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.