A German joke is no laughing matter.

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.

Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.

I think a compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.

Don't wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

By his father he is English, by his mother he is Americanto my mind the blend which makes the perfect man.

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant.