I am the entire human race compacted together. I have found that there is no ingredient of the race which I do not possess in either a small way or a large way.

In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable and did know it.

Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others-his last breath.

No throne exists that has a right to exist, and no symbol of it, flying from any flagstaff, is righteously entitled to wear any device but the skull and crossbones of that kindred industry which differs from royalty only businesswise-merely as retail differs from wholesale.

I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.

If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as she bids you, and then afterwards act quietly in the matter according to the dictates of your better judgment.

If all men were rich, all men would be poor.