Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

Friendship is a common belief in the same fallacies, mountebanks and hobgoblins.

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.

The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake.

Justice is what you get when you run out of money.

One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched.

The great secret of happiness in love is to be glad that the other fellow married her.