"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."

"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."