"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know."

"I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well."

"There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that."

"I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty."

"Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

"I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened."

"Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary."

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

"Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

"Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates."

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

"The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."

"Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

"When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain."

"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."

"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."