An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it down till the average is three and a half... I never write metropolis for seven cents, because I can get the same money for city. I never write policeman, because I can get the same price for cop.... I never write valetudinarian at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness can humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn't do it for fifteen.

The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.

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

The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness--your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture....He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher.

There is nothing that saps one's confidence as the knowing how to do a thing

One learns peoples through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.

Be good and you'll be lonesome