Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.

A "classic" is a book that everybody praises but nobody has read

Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.

Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization-one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. . . . The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. . . . When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world.

It makes one hope and believe that a day will come when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of life. It grieves me to think how far more profound and reverent a respect the law would have for literature if a body could only get drunk on it.