'Kicked them downstairs with such very fine grace,
They thought he was handing them up'?
"A sense of humor is one of the most precious gifts that can be vouchsafed to a human being. He is not necessarily a better man for having it, but he is a happier one. It renders him indifferent to good or bad fortune. It enables him to enjoy his own discomfiture. Blessed with this sense, he is never unduly elated or cast down. No one can ruffle his temper. No abuse disturbs his equanimity. Bores do not bore him. Humbugs do not humbug him. Solemn airs do not impose on him. Sentimental gush does not influence him. The follies of the moment have no hold on him."
Boston Journal.
There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be but to boil an egg. Manners are the happy way of doing things; each one the stroke of genius or of love—now repeated and hardened into usage. Your manners are always under examination, and by committees little suspected—a police in citizen's clothes—but are awarding or denying you very high prizes when you least think of it.
Emerson.
My experience of life makes me sure of one truth, which I do not try to explain; that the sweetest happiness we ever know, the very wine of human life, comes not from love, but from sacrifice—from the effort to make others happy. This is as true to me as that my flesh will burn if I touch red-hot metal.
John Boyle O'Reilly.