whenever the literary german dives into a sentence, this is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

A woman springs a sudden reproach upon you which provokes a hot retort, and then she will presently ask you to apologize.

A discriminating irreverence is the creator and protector of human liberty.

Everything human is pathetic

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

You must not pay a person a compliment, and then straightway follow it with a criticism.

The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.