The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands. The average man ought to be allowed a quotation of no less than three sentences, one to make his statement and two to explain what he meant. Ralph Waldo Emerson was about the only one who could stand having his utterances broken up into sentence quotations, and every once in a while even he doesn’t sound so sensible in short snatches.

A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.

It must be a source of great chagrin to those in charge to think of so many people being able to stick a stamp on a letter and drop it in a mail box without any trouble or suffering at all. They are probably working on a system this very minute, trying to devise some way in which the public can be made to fill out a blank, stand in line, consult some underling who will refer him to a superior, and then be made to black up with burned cork before they can mail a letter.

What is to be done with people who can't read a Sunday paper without messing it all up?... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way.

People who begin sentences with "I may be old-fashioned but--" are usually not only old-fashioned but wrong. I never thought the time would come when I should catch myself leading off with that crack. But I feel it coming on right now.

A child of three cannot raise its chubby fist to its mouth to remove a piece of carpet which it is through eating, without being made the subject of a psychological seminar of child-welfare experts, and written up, along with five hundred other children of three who have put their hands to their mouths for the same reason.

I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.