I thought tamarinds were made to eat, but that was probably not the idea. I ate several, and it seemed to me that they were rather sour that year. They pursed up my lips, till they resembled the stem-end of a tomato, and I had to take my sustenance through a quill for twenty-four hours. They sharpened my teeth till I could have shaved with them, and gave them a 'wire edge' that I was afraid would stay; but a citizen said 'no, it will come off when the enamel does' - which was comforting, at any rate. I found, afterward, that only strangers eat tamarinds - but they only eat them once.

What's the use you learning to do right , when it's troublesome to do right and it ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?

The very "marks" on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy.

Your road is everything that a road ought to be...and yet you will not stay in it half a mile, for the reason that little, seductive, mysterious roads are always branching out from it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and hide what is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your own chosen path and explore them.

I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life. And yet-I am inclined to expect one.

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.

Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.