The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.

Only a fool expects to be happy all the time.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

As the tragic writer rids us of what is petty and ignoble in our nature, so also the humorist rids us of what is cautious, calculating, and priggish--about half of our social conscience, indeed. Both of them permit us, in blessed moments of revelation, to soar above the common level of our lives.

It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were five years old.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.