No God and no religion can survive ridicule. No political church, no nobility, no royalty or other fraud, can face ridicule in a fair field, and live.

Don't explain your author, read him right and he explains himself.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought to learn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, French in thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it is to remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside among the dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.