It were not best that we should all think alike.

Architects cannot teach nature anything.

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.

Why is it that, among men, physical courage is a trait so plenteous yet moral courage is a trait so rare?

There is no security in life, only opportunity.

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.

When I take up one of Jane Austen's books ... I feel like a barkeep entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so.