Scott calls Bois-Guilbert ‘an unprincipled voluptuary,’ which is hard to improve on.
There is some consolation in the fact that, even though your dreams don’t come true, neither do your nightmares.
There are very few humorists who have written first-rate humor after they’ve become elderly.
Rather than earn money, it was Thoreau’s idea to reduce his wants so that he would not need to buy anything. As he went around preaching this ingenious idea, the shopkeepers of Concord hoped he would drop dead.
Each year it grows harder to make ends meet – the ends I refer to are hands and feet.
My day-old son is plenty scrawny, his mouth is wide with screams, or yawny; His ears seem larger than he’s needing, His nose is flat, his chin’s receding. His skin is very, very red, He has no hair upon his head, And yet I’m proud as proud can be, To hear you say he looks like me.
When it comes to eating, you can sometimes help yourself more by helping yourself less.
Good sportsmanship we hail, we sing, It’s always pleasant when you spot it. There’s only one unhappy thing: You have to lose to prove that you’ve got it.
I love a finished speaker, I really, truly do I don’t mean one who’s polished, I just mean one who’s through.
Some people can carry a tune, but they seem to stagger under the load.
Although practice swings Can be helpful things, Twere better, indeed, not take any Than to fiddle and fret And before playing get Exhausted from taking too many.
There is no balm of Gilead, No salve, no soothing ointment To stay the pain of one who’s had In love a disappointment – Unless it be that healing lotion Of fixing on a new devotion.
I miss my mattress when I am gone; It’s one thing I’ve made an impression on.
The great improvement of the radio over the telephone is that it may be turned off without offending the speaker.
How I love to get a letter! I can think of nothing better Than perusing an epistolary item. But deep is my despondence, For I’ve found that correspondence Means that if you want to get ’em, You must write ’em!
If you convinced me And I convinced you, Would there not still be Two points of view?
Dedicated to that amazing device, the Required Reading List, better even than artificial respiration for keeping dead authors alive.
Oregon was discovered when someone followed the Oregon Trail right out to the end.
The author apologizes for being unable to afford a ghost writer, which explains the lack of a distinctive prose style.
Almost nothing is known about Homer, which explains why so much has been written about him.