Explaining humor is a lot like dissecting a frog, you learn a lot in the process, but in the end you kill it.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

One of life's most over-valued pleasures is sexual intercourse; of one of life's least appreciated pleasures in defecation.

The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Tell me about a person's family, friends, and community, and I'll tell you what his opinions are.

It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death.