"Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

"Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do."

"Schoolboy days are no happier than the days of afterlife, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed - because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of the canonized ethic and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden-sword pageants, and its fishing holidays."

"T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others."

"Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again."

"The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling."

"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

"When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers."

"There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable."

"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards."

"The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice."

"The pause - that impressive silence that eloquent silence that geometrically progressive silence which often achieves a desired effect where no combination of words howsoever felicitous could accomplish it."

"That's just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don't want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain't no disgrace."

"Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates with readers and creates a ripple effect."

"Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain."

"A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught."

"Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms."

"The Public is merely a multiplied "me.""

"When I was younger I could remember anything whether it had happened or not."

"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to."

"Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!"

"I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael Angelo was dead."

"It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells."

"The time to being writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say."

"Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century."

"If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first."

"My books are water, those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water."

"Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself."

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

"It's considered good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling."

"What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself."

"Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul."

"I have made it a rule never to smoke more that one cigar at a time."

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't."

"Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain."

"April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four."

"Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often."

"I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals."

"A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation."

"I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't."

"Happiness is a Swedish sunset it is there for all but most of us look the other way and lose it."

"Make money and the whole world will conspire to call you a gentleman."

"India has 2,000,000 gods and worships them all. In religion, all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire."

"As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake."

"You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns."

"Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie-I found that out."

"Look at the tyranny of party-- at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty-- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes-- and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits; and all the while, their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing thier doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible-texts and billies, and pocketing the insults nad licking the shoes of his Southern master."

"When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it; no, it is the atmosphere in which the talent was cradled that explains; it is the training it received while it grew, the nurture it got from reading, study, example, the encouragement it gathered from self-recognition and recognition from the outside at each stage of its development: when we know all these details, then we know why the man was ready when his opportunity came."

"When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum."

"I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."