All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light.

The power to love what is purely abstract is given to few.

I was born in the country of Hogg and Scott between the Yarrow and the Tweed, in the year 1864.

He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head.

Rumor is untraceable, incalculable, and infectious.

[To Jean Harlow, who repeatedly mispronounced her first name:] No, no, Jean. The t is silent, as in Harlow.

There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs --apart from discernment --a certain greatness to find him.