Though man is the only beast that can write, he has small reason to be proud of it. When he utters something that is wise it is nothing that the river horse does not know, and most of his creations are the result of accident.

I have no confidence in a man whose faults you cannot see.

To write is a humiliation.

Narcissus never wrote well nor was a friend.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Perhaps Samuel Johnson was a great man; he was certainly a drumbling one.

Everything ultimately fails, for we die, and that is either the penultimate failure or our most enigmatical achievement.