One cannot lay a foundation by scattering stones, nor is a reputation for good work to be got by strewing volumes about the world.

I haven't much opinion of words. They're apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that's what I say.

I never saw the man yet that came out of politics as clean as he went into 'em.

I've liked life well enough, but I reckon I'll like death even better as soon as I've gotten used to the feel of it. ... I shouldn't be amazed to find it less lonely than life after I'm once safely settled.

Youth is the period of harsh judgments, and a man seldom learns until he reaches thirty that human nature is made up not of simples, but of compounds.

The older I grow the more earnestly I feel that the few joys of childhood are the best that life has to give.

Preserve, within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reverie.