Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.

A country without a patent office and good patent laws is just a crab, and can't travel any way but sideways and backways.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

We wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries, so that we can "show off" and astonish people when we get home. We wish to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign fashions which we can't shake off.

The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond belief. [On Lohengrin]

To say a compliment well is a high art and few possess it.

If horses knew their strength we should not ride anymore.