Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.
The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples – that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.
I am not an American. I am the American.
You should never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word.
True irreverence is disrespect for another man’s god.
If God had meant for us to be naked, we’d have been born that way.
The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad.
Priapism is what happens when someone gets strangulated to the point of hypoxia.
Going to law is losing a cow for the sake of a cat.
Not until you become a stranger to yourself will you be able to make acquaintance with the Friend.
The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.
The English are mentioned in the Bible; Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small way or a large way.
It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent on him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.
We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking.
I think a compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.
It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.
The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.
Let your secret sympathies and your compassion be always with the under dog in the fight – this is magnanimity; but bet on the other one – this is business.
Where prejudice exists it always discolors our thoughts.