That is their way, those plagues, those scientists - peg, peg, peg - dig, dig, dig - plod, plod, plod. I wish I could catch a cargo of them for my place; it would be an economy. Yes, for years, you see. They never give up. Patience, hope, faith, perseverance; it is the way of all the breed.

To be busy is man's only happiness.

I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature. ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells. ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered.

I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead--and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and they would be honest so much earlier.

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life.

Man can seldom - very, very, seldom - fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy.

There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.