A painter can hang his pictures, but a writer can only hang himself.

Utility is our national shibboleth: the savior of the American businessman is fact and his uterine half-brother, statistics.

We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain.

So much of our lives is given over to the consideration of our imperfections that there is no time to improve our imaginary virtues. The truth is we only perfect our vices, and man is a worse creature when he dies than he was when he was born.

A man who can be entertaining for a full day will be in his grave by night-fall.

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.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.