“Hark to the sky of a seagull!He cries because he's not an eagle.Oh, what if you were you silly he-gull?What would you say to your she-gull?”

“Which the Chicken and Which the Egg?He drinks because she scolds, he thinks;She thinks she scolds because he drinks;And nether will admit what's true,That he's a sot and she's a shrew.”

“Unwillingly Miranda wakes,Feels the sun with terror,One unwilling step she takes,Shuddering to the mirror.Miranda in Miranda's sightIs old and gray and dirty;Twenty-nine she was last night;This morning she is thirty.Shining like the morning star,Like the twilight shining,Haunted by a calendar,Miranda is a-pining.Silly girl, silver girl,Draw the mirror toward you;Time who makes the years to whirlAdorned as he adored you.Time is timelessness for you;Calendars for the human;What's a year, or thirty, toLoveliness made woman?Oh, Night will not see thirty again,Yet soft her wing, Miranda;Pick up your glass and tell me, then--How old is Spring, Miranda?”

“either you get eaten by a wolf today or else the shepherd saves you from the wolf so he can sell you to the butcher tomorrow”

“I give you now Professor TwistThe conscientious scientist.Trustees exclaimed, “He never bungles”And sent him off to distant jungles.Camped on a tropic riversideOne day he missed his lovely bride.She had, the guide informed him later, Been eaten by an alligator.Professor Twist could not but smile.You mean,” he said “a crocodile.!”

“There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges,Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies.I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,Because I think that is sort of sweet;No, I object to one kind of apology alone,Which is when people spend their time and yours apologizing for everything they own.You go to their house for a meal,And they apologize because the anchovies aren't caviar or the partridge is veal;They apologize privately for the crudeness of the other guests,And they apologize publicly for their wife's housekeeping or their husband's jests;If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott,And if they take you to the theater, they apologize for the acting and the dialogue and the plot;They contain more milk of human kindness than the most capacious diary can,But if you are from out of town they apologize for everything local and if you are a foreigner they apologize for everything American.I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them,I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them,Because you are very rude if you let them emerge from an argument victorious,And when they say something of theirs is awful, it is your duty to convince them politely that it is magnificent and glorious,And what particularly bores me with them,Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them,So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf,Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.”

“My fellow man I do not care for.I often ask me, What's he there for?The only answer i can findIs, Reproduction of his kind.”