I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it.

The idea that no gentleman ever swears is all wrong. He can swear and still be a gentleman if he does it in a nice and benevolent and affectionate way.

The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good. Only the mediocre is unendurable.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.

Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence- stuffed and in a museum.

I used to think my father was an idiot, until I turned twenty-one... Then I thought he was a genus.

Suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone defying all prayers and all your powers to change its mind - your heart stands still, your breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work.