We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened - Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could a laid them; well that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course It could be done.

To place man properly at the present time, he stands somewhere between the angels and the French.

If you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day.

What a curious kind of fool a girl is. Never been licked in school. What's a licking?

It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.