1. "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. We must triumph in his downfall, yet not barbarously nor with contempt, and the close of his career must be in harmony with all its previous development."
2. "Humor brings insight and tolerance. Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding."
3. "In the stress of modern life, how little room is left for that most comfortable vanity that whispers in our ears that failures are not faults! Now we are taught from infancy that we must rise or fall upon our own merits; that vigilance wins success, and incapacity means ruin."
4. “It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self.”
5. "It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere."
6. "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."
7. "People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization."
8. "The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it."
9. "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."
10. “There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.”
11. "There is nothing in the world so enjoyable as a thorough-going monomania..."
12. “We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.”
