I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.

It's not that we don't have enough scoundrels to curse; it's that we don't have enough good men to curse them.

It is a mathematical fact that if a line be not perfectly directed towards a point, it will actually go further away from it as it comes nearer to it.

Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.

Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition.

And pray where in earth or heaven are there prudent marriages-Might as well talk about prudent suicides.