One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.

The slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable.

Sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get achance, because if you don't want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain't ever forgot. I never see papa when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.

None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try.

God, so atrocious in the Old Testament, so attractive in the New--the Jekyl and Hyde of sacred romance.

To be human is to have one's little modicum of romance secreted away in one's composition. One never ceases to make a hero of one's self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of his admiration and raise up others in their stead.