We put [young children] into kindergarten where their reasoning powers are ruined; or, if we can afford it, we buy Montessori outfits . . . or we send them to outdoor schools and give them prizes for sleeping.

Simplicity is an acquired taste. Mankind, left free, instinctively complicates life.

The principle of fashion is . . . the principle of the kaleidoscope. A new year can only bring us a new combination of the same elements; and about once in so often we go back and begin again.

Civilization is merely an advance in taste: accepting, all the time, nicer things, and rejecting nasty ones.

Funny how people despise platitudes, when they are usually the truest thing going. A thing has to be pretty true before it gets to be a platitude.