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.

His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there's scarcely a hole in it anywhere.

Who is this Renaissance? Where did he come from? Who gave him permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs?

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

I do love compliments, yet I'm often embarrassed to say what I think to the person when I get a compliment. I so often feel that they have not gone far enough.

I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.

We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we ever invented, which was human liberty.