It is not worth while to strain one's self to tell the truth to people who habitually discount everything you tell them, whether it is true or isn't.

These are the true and only God, mighty and supreme.

In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?

Whatever you have lived, you can write & by hard work & a genuine apprenticeship, you can learn to write well; but what you have not lived you cannot write, you can only pretend to write it.

There is nothing but that frail breastwork of earth between the people and destruction.

There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is - in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree - it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime- the invention of Hell.

I like a thin book because it will Steady a Table, a leather volume because it will Strop a Razor, and a heavy book because it can be Thrown at a Cat.