O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed.

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way.