All say, ‘how hard it is that we have to die’ -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.

An occultation of Venus is not half so difficult as an eclipse of the sun, but because it comes seldom the world thinks it's a grand thing.

I simply can't resist a cat, particularly a purring one.

An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.

My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.

No one can write perfect English and keep it up through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done.