I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits; a man must have courage to look after his life so, and think what'll come f it after he's dead and gone.

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous manner.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs and small notions; about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.

...Though there's reasons in things as nobody knows on---- that's pretty much what I've made out; yet some folks are so wise they'll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the corner, and they niver see't.

autobiography at least saves a man or woman that the world is curious about from the publication of a string of mistakes called 'Memoirs.

Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth; we are saved by making the future present to ourselves.