If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.
Mark TwainWhen the human race has once acquired a superstition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.
Mark TwainTo us, our house was not unsentient matter -- it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction.
Mark TwainHardly a man in the world has an opinion upon morals, political, or religion which he got otherwise than through his associations and sympathies.
Mark Twain