The true charm of pedestrians does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking.

You can't keep a juvenile moral institution alive on two displays of its sash per year.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

There is nothing like instances to grow hair on a bald-headed argument.

I persuaded him to throw the dirk away; and it was as easy as persuading a child to give up some bright fresh new way of killing itself.

Some civilized women would lose half their charm without dress and some would lose all of it.