My father would invite me sweetly to come and sit on a stool at his feet, and, as I let myself trustingly down, he would gently kick the seat from under me - and laugh.

We need some great failures. Especially we ever-successful Americans - conscious, intelligent, illuminating failures.

In all cities, the better classes - the business men - are the sources of corruption, but they are so rarely pursued and caught that we do not fully realize whence the trouble comes.

Keep your baby eyes (which are the eyes of genius) on what we don't know

Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization.

If we would vote in mass on the more promising ticket, or, if the two are equally bad, would throw out the party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out the other party that is in - then, I say, the commercial politician would feel a demand for good government and he would supply it.

I let my boy go and do and say pretty much as he likes, as, and perhaps because, my father kept no string on me.