"If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times."

"I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself."

"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."

"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any."

"It usually takes me two or three days to prepare an impromptu speech."

"There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous andshallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said 'Faith is believing what youknow ain't so'."

"Familiarity breeds contempt and children."

"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."

"Humor is mankind's greatest blessing."

"The lack of money is the root of all evil."

"Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."

"If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian."

"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. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."

"When red-headed people are above a certain social grade their hair is auburn."

"It is by the goodness of god that in our country we have those 3 unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."

"When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it."

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."]"

"The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

"A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it."

"What is Man? Man is a noisome bacillus whom Our Heavenly Father created because he was disappointed in the monkey."

"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards."

"Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."