There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can.

Man is the only animal that is cruel. It kills just for the sake of it.

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

Men are like bank accounts. The more money, the more interest they generate.

A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.

To go abroad has something of the same sense that death brings. I am no longer of ye-what ye say of me is now of no consequence.