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

I played Chess with him and would have beaten him sometimes only he always took back his last move, and ran the game out differently

It makes one hope and believe that a day will come when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whiskey, or any other of the necessaries of life. It grieves me to think how far more profound and reverent a respect the law would have for literature if a body could only get drunk on it.

It's a good thing for a dog to have fleas; keeps his mind off being a dog.

What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.

I like a thin book because it will Steady a Table, a leather volume because it will Strop a Razor, and a heavy book because it can be Thrown at a Cat.

All generalizations are false, including this one.