But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties.
We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.
All laughter is a muscular rigidity spasmodically relieved by involuntary twitching.
Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.
This congestion in the post offices is due to what are technically known as “regulations” but what are really a series of acrostics and anagrams devised by some officials who got around a table one night and tried to be funny.
It was one of those plays in which all of the actors unfortunately enunciated very clearly.
Charlemagne either died or was born or did something with the Holy Roman Empire in 800.
You won’t find one fish in a million that has enough sense to come in when it rains.
I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists.
Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs.
The wise man thinks once before he speaks twice.
My only solution for the problem of habitual accidents is to stay in bed all day. Even then, there is always the chance that you will fall out.
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.
The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life whichdoes not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.
I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.
I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.
Infants need the most sleep, and, what is more, get it. Stunning them with a soft, padded hammer is the best way to insure their getting it at the right times.
In preparing the soil for planting, you will need several tools. Dynamite would be a beautiful thing to use, but it would have a tendency to get the dirt into the front-hall and track up the stairs.
If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner for the Mack Sennett studios.
Go jogging? And get hit by a meteor?
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who do not.