“If books are not good company, where shall I find it?”

“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”

“When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy--that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.”

“Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.”

“What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.”

“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor: he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”

“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”

“There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.”

“A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.”

“The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”

“for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.”

“There is nothing so annoying as having two people talking when you're busy interrupting.”

“No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

“Great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.”

“Many public-school children seem to know only two dates—1492 and 4th of July; and as a rule they don't know what happened on either occasion.”

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopt.”

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

“Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.”

“There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist.”

“The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot.”

“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?”

“Distance lends enchantment to the view.”

“That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.”