No one can write perfect English and keep it up through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done.

If you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and you don't tell them he's a damned fool, they'll never find out.

I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die.

To be human is to have one's little modicum of romance secreted away in one's composition. One never ceases to make a hero of one's self, (in private,) during life, but only alters the style of heroism from time to time as the drifting years belittle certain gods of his admiration and raise up others in their stead.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

...one should be gentle with the ignorant, for they are the chosen of God.

My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.