The old Irish when immersing a babe at baptism left out the right arm so that it would remain pagan for good fighting

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.

[On Dutch flat poetry]: It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like butter-milk gurgling from a jug.

There are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every eatable, drinkable, and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get for it. How strange it is. It is like paying out your whole fortune for a cow that has gone dry.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together, who would escape hanging? Framed in a more positive light, this tells us also that if we wish to accomplish a particular thing then we need to increase our level of desire for that thing and to create or seek out the opportunities and right environment for it to happen without fail.

Well enough for old folks to rise early, because they have done so many mean things all their lives they can't sleep anyhow.