When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.

As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

There are German songs which can make a stranger to the language cry.

We never knew an ignorant person yet but was prejudiced.

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

It were not best that we should all think alike.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so.