Wherein lies a poet's claim to originality? That he invents his incidents? No. That he was present when his episodes had their birth? No. That he was first to repeat them? No. None of these things has any value. He confers on them their only originality that has any value, and that is his way of telling them." Mark Twain "...every literature, in its main lines, reflects the chief characteristics of the people for whom, and about whom, it is written.

Our blindest impulses become evidence of perspicacity when they fall in with the course of events.

Inkstands and tea-cups are never as full as when one upsets them.

It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.

There was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest notion that she was not free.

...and wondering where he had read that clever liars give details, but that the cleverest do not.

...I have always lived on contrasts! To me the only death is monotony. Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.