Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

The most important part of our lives-our sensations, emotions, desires, and aspirations-takes place in a universe of illusions which science can attenuate or destroy, but which it is powerless to enrich.

How anyone can profess to find animal life interesting and yet take delight in reducing the wonder of any animal to a bloody mass of fur or feathers?

Civilizations die from philosophical calm, irony, and a sense of fair play quite as surely as they die of debauchery.

If we are deprived of hope as well as fear, we are compensated by being given an almost endless patience for enduring or simply for waiting.

Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.

The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.