It is a pity we can’t escape from life when we are young.
Guides cannot master the subtleties of the American joke.
Persons who think there is no such thing as luck good or bad are entitled to their opinion, although I think they ought to be shot for it.
Brooklyn praise is half slander.
I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little – not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.
Pilgrim’s Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough.
Surely the test of a novel’s characters is that you feel a strong interest in them and their affairs the good to be successful, the bad to suffer failure. Well, in John Ward, you feel no divided interest, no discriminating interest you want them all to land in hell together, and right away.
Whenever the human race assembles to a number exceeding four, it cannot stand free speech.
It is a mystery that is hidden from me by reason that the emergency requiring the fathoming of it hath not in my life-days occurred, and so, not having no need to know this thing, I abide barren of the knowledge.
I am always reading immoral books on the sly, and then selfishly trying to prevent other people from having the same wicked good time.
As I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious.
There has never been a Protestant boy nor a Protestant girl whose mind the Bible has not soiled.
Gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica.
Talent without work is useless, thank God.
Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow.
Education that consists in learning things and not the meaning of them is feeding upon the husks and not the corn.
No one can tell me what is a good cigar – for me. I am the only judge. People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the world. They bring their own cigars when they come to my house.
France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals. France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.
I felt it was my duty to praise all of God’s works with fervent enthusiasm. At the same time I killed flies in my house in a spirit of hatred, exasperation and contempt. My praise to God for all his works was dishonest, the act of killing the fly was honest.
For we were little Christian children and early learned the value of forbidden fruit.