"There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce."

"There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land again after a cheerful careless voyage."

"I would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective."

"Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen."

"Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste."

"Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on 'The Survival of the Fittest.' These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution."

"Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh."

"Diligence and attention soon gave him the knack of it, and he strode down the street with his mouth full of harmony and his soul full of gratitude. He felt much as an astronomer feels who has discovered a new planet-no doubt, as far as strong, deep, unalloyed pleasure is concerned, the advantage was with the boy, not the astronomer."

"When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain."

"The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."

"Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be."

"By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean."

"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause."

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work."

"I'll not go where there is any of that sort of thing going on, again. It's the sure way, and the only sure way."

"You gwyne to have considerable trouble in yo' life, en considerable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin."

"I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one."

"The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

"Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody."

"The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world's daytime dictionaries."

"An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere."

"One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it."

"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please."

"Work is a necessary evil to be avoided."

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

"Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."

"A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory."

"Fewer things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

"You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there."

"Stars and shadows ain't good to see by."

"All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure."

"He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it, namely, that, in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain."

"The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession."

"For a little while, hope made a show of reviving-not with any reason to back it, but only because it is its nature to revive when the spring has not been taken out of it by age and familiarity with failure."

"After a long time and many questions, Satan said, "The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?"

"The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."

"Loose and forbear!"

"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."

"You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn't be anywhere but there, not for the world."

"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death."

"In his private heart no man much respects himself."

"Better a broken promise than none at all."

"The writing begins when you've finished. Only then do you know what you're trying to say."

"The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies."

"Herschel removed the speckled tent-roof from the world and exposed the immeasurable deeps of space, dim-flecked with fleets of colossal suns sailing their billion-leagued remoteness."

"Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: 'I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars."

"I am opposed to millionaires but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."

"Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."

"The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year."

"I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience."