It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.

I could not conjure up one melancholy fancy upon a mutton chop and a glass of champagne.

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.

I often arrive at quite sensible ideas and judgements, on the spur of the moment. It is when I stop to think that I become foolish.

What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow.

You can always tell the old river hand by the way in which he stretches himself out upon the cushions at the bottom of the boat, and encourages the rowers by telling them anecdotes about the marvellous feats he performed last season.

It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.