“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.”

“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?”

“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?”

“Higgledy piggledy, my black hen,She lays eggs for gentlemen.Gentlemen come every dayTo count what my black hen doth lay.If perchance she lays too many,They fine my hen a pretty penny;If perchance she fails to lay,The gentlemen a bonus pay.Mumbledy pumbledy, my red cow,She’s cooperating now.At first she didn’t understandThat milk production must be planned;She didn’t understand at firstShe either had to plan or burst,But now the government reportsShe’s giving pints instead of quarts.Fiddle de dee, my next-door neighbors,They are giggling at their labors.First they plant the tiny seed,Then they water, then they weed,Then they hoe and prune and lop,They they raise a record crop,Then they laugh their sides asunder,And plow the whole caboodle under.Abracadabra, thus we learnThe more you create, the less you earn.The less you earn, the more you’re given,The less you lead, the more you’re driven,The more destroyed, the more they feed,The more you pay, the more they need,The more you earn, the less you keep,And now I lay me down to sleep.I pray the Lord my soul to takeIf the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.”

“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.”

“I have an idea that the phrase “weaker sex” was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm. ”

“He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, While he who's served a heavy sentence Renews the racket, not repentance.”