"Ah, heavens and earth, friend, if you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor that you could to-day."

"I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened."

"It is not that I believe that there are too many idiots in this world, just that lightning isn't distributed right."

"If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it."

"I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead."

"Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it."

"Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn't no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn't anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it."

"Comparison is the death of joy."

"I wish to become rich so that I can instruct the people and glorify honest poverty a little like those kind-hearted fat benevolent people do."

"If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much."

"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."

"In statesmanship get formalities right never mind about the moralities."

"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any."

"It was a dreadful thing to see. Humans beings can be awful cruel to one another."

"Sometimes I wish we could hear of a country that's out of kings."

"A home without a cat - and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat - may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?"

"That kind of so-called housekeeping where they have six Bibles and no cork-screw."

"Golf is a good walk spoiled."

"For I never care to do a thing in a quiet way, it's got to be theatrical or I don't take any interest in it."

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

"You cannot surprise an individual more than twice with the same marvel."

"There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them."

"Obscurity and a competence-that is the life that is best worth living."

"Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied."

"The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal."

"What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce."

"Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written."

"To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such."

"There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous andshallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what youknow ain't so'."

"If the writer doesn't sweat, the reader will."

"My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water."

"We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter."

"Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions."

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

"Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor both to yourself and to your country let men label you as they may."

"Jim said he believed it was spirits, but I says: no, spirits wouldn't say "dern the dern fog"."

"Habit is habit and not to be thrown out of the window by any man but coaxed downstairs a step at a time."

"Love is a madness if thwarted it develops fast."

"Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty."

"Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid."

"Familiarity breeds contempt - and children."

"Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever."

"'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read."

"What a hell of a heaven it will be when they get all these hypocrites assembled there!"

"High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water."

"Richard Wagner a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds."

"It is better to deserve honours and not have them than to have them and not deserve them."

"If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be-a Christian."

"I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

"New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin."