It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.

Edged tools are dangerous things to handle, and not infrequently do much hurt.

It is impossible for a lover of cats to banish these alert, gentle, and discriminating friends, who give us just enough of their regard and complaisance to make us hunger for more.

Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding.

The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them.

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.

The thinkers of the world should by rights be guardians of the world's mirth.

Conversation between Adam and Eve must have been difficult at times because they had nobody to talk about.

It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.

Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their earthly pedestals.

A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever, and generally stopping before it gets there.

There is always a secret irritation about a laugh into which we cannot join.

Laughter springs from the lawless part of our nature.

There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.

We cannot really love anyone with with whom we never laugh.

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

The diseases of the present have little in common with the diseases of the past save that we die of them.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

It has been well said that tea is suggestive of a thousand wants, from which spring the decencies and luxuries of civilization.

It is as impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

Everybody is now so busy teaching that nobody has any time to learn.

There is a vast deal of make believe in the carefully nurtured sentiment for country life and the barefoot boy and the mountain girl.

Economics and ethics have little in common.

We know when we have had enough of a friend and we know when a friend has had enough of us. The first truth is no more palatable than the second.

The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.

A kitten is the most irresistible comedian in the world. Its wide-open eyes gleam with wonder and mirth. It darts madly at nothing at all, and then, as though suddenly checked in the pursuit, prances sideways on its hind legs with ridiculous agility and zeal.

A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever and generally stopping before it gets there.

The cat dwells within the circle of her own secret thoughts.

When the milk of human kindness turns sour, it is a singularly unpalatable draught.

The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.

The least practical of us have some petty thrift dear to our hearts, some one direction in which we love to scrimp.

A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits and minus common sense.

A puppy is but a dog, plus high spirits, and minus common sense.

Resistance, which is the function of conservatism, is essential to orderly advance.

Erudition, like a bloodhound, is a charming thing when held firmly in leash, but it is not so attractive when turned loose upon a defenseless and unerudite public.

Sensuality, too, which used to show itself course, smiling, unmasked, and unmistakable, is now serious, analytic, and so burdened with a sense of its responsibilities that it passes muster half the time as a new type of asceticism.

A villain must be a thing of power, handled with delicacy and grace. He must be wicked enough to excite our aversion, strong enough to arouse our fear, human enough to awaken some transient gleam of sympathy.

A world of vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candour.

I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd Street.

Food was a constant topic of conversation in our household.

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while.

What I think we need to do to engage the American people in a conversation about entitlement reform is to have a bipartisan group of people who come together and put every solution on the table, every alternative on the table. And then we ought to engage in a long conversation with the American people so they understand the choices.

It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.

If you're interested in how people behave, if you're interested in the way they talk about themselves, the way the conceive of themselves, it's very hard to ignore drugs nowadays, because that is so much part of the conversation.