No man that has ever lived has done a thing to please God--primarily. It was done to please himself, then God next.

Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.

A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives them.

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion.

Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall to mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women and children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for they must love something)

I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that, my art is not above the ordinary.

I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.