Man is without doubt the most interesting fool there is. He concedes that God made the angels immune from pain and death, and that he could have been similarly kind to man, but denies that he was under any moral obligation to do so.

Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.

The convention missionaries call "modesty" has no standard, and cannot have one, because it is opposed to nature and reason and is therefore an artificiality and subject to anybody's whim - anybody's diseased caprice.

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.

A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.

The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede.