Life does not consist mainly – or even largely – of facts and happenings.
Among other common lies, we have the silent lie – the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.
Congress: America’s only true criminal class.
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English – it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.
The equator was wisely put where it is, because if it had been run through Europe all the kings would have tried to grab it.
An occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it’s a grand thing.
Constellations have always been troublesome things to name. If you give one of them a fanciful name, it will always refuse to live up to it; it will always persist in not resembling the thing it has been named for.
When you catch an adjective, kill it – perhaps the best possible advice for budding writers.
The only certainties in life are death and taxes.
Denial is much more then an Egyptian River.
My heart goes out to anyone who is making his first appearance before an audience of human beings.
Some people give their problems swimming lessons instead of drowning them.
Tis Better to Sit there and LOOK the fool, than to open your mouth and prove it.
The true charm of pedestrians does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking.
Take your mind out every now and then and dance on it. It is getting all caked up.
To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the on-looking world consent to it is finer.
There ain’t nothing more to write about and I’m rotten glad of it, because if I’d know’d what trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn’t a tackled it.
Every time I read a Jane Austen novel, I feel like a bartender at the gates of heaven.
Nothing so focuses the mind as the prospect of being hanged.
Man is the only animal that deals in that atorcity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind.