Circumstances make man, not man circumstances.

Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.

... the English alphabet is pure insanity..., It can hardly spell any word in the language with any degree of certainty.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

A man's house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing. And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential - here was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost...It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.

The funniest things are the forbidden.

Education is what remains when what is learned has been taken away.