When someone dies, it is like when your house burns down; it isn't for years that you realize the full extent of your loss.

The report of my illness grew out of his (James Clemens) illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration.

There is nothing but that frail breastwork of earth between the people and destruction.

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.

I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.

Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone-if still alive.