“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

“Be good and you will be lonesome.”

“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.”

“A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.”

“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want.”

“It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.”

“Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.”

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

“Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.”

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightening that does the work.”

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”

“The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”

“The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.”

“Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.”

“There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, and a tragedy.”

“A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.”

“Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”

“In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.”

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

“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.”

“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”

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