Perhaps the most revolting character that the United States ever produced was the Christian Businessman.

A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity.

The average schoolmaster is and always must be essentially an ass, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation.

The American people, North and South, went into the [Civil] war as citizens of their respective states, they came out as subjects ... what they thus lost they have never got back.

Man's objection to love is that it dies hard: women's, that when it is dead it stays dead.

The best years are the forties; after fifty a man begins to deteriorate, but in the forties he is at the maximum of his villainy.

Any defeat, however trivial, may be fatal to a savior of the plain people. They never admire a messiah with a bloody nose.