A smile is the universal welcome

A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully

Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance