Many public-school children seem to know only two dates—1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don't know what happened on either occasion.

We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.

A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.

Tell me about a person's family, friends, and community, and I'll tell you what his opinions are.

The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. [On Lohengrin]

Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame.

It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No- and I see now plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business.