Cranks live by theory, not by pure desire. They want votes, peace, nuts, liberty, and spinning-looms not because they love these things, as a child loves jam, but because they think they ought to have them. That is one element which makes the crank.

Every year, in the deep midwinter, there descends upon this world a terrible fortnight. ... every shop is a choked mass of humanity ... nerves are jangled and frayed, purses emptied to no purposes, all amusements and all occupations suspended in favor of frightful businesses with brown paper, string, letters, cards, stamps, and crammed post offices. This period is doubtless a foretaste of whatever purgatory lies in store for human creatures.

It is to the eccentrics that the world owes most of its knowledge.

At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.

Many persons read and like fiction. It does not tax the intelligence and the intelligence of most of us can so ill afford taxation that we rightly welcome any reading matter which avoids this.

I seldom meet actors, they are to me bright strange fishes swimming in an element alien to me; I feel that to meet them is to See Life.

the position of women, that sad and well-nigh universal blot on civilizations, was never far from her mind.