Benaras is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together!

I wrote 'Tom Sawyer' and 'Huck Finn' for adults exclusively, and it always distressed me when I find that boys and girls have been allowed access to them. The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean.

There is this trouble about special providences namely, there is so often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they got the children.

There are things which some people never attempt during their whole lives, but one of these is not poetry. Poetry attacks all human beings sooner or later, and, like the measles, is mild or violent according to the age of the sufferer.

He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.

Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine.

High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.