It is so unsatisfactory to read a noble passage and have no one you love at hand to share the happiness with you. And it is unsatisfactory to read to one's self anyhow - for the uttered voice so heightens the expression.

If there are no cigars in heaven, I shall not go.

One gains at least two to three times more experience grabbing the tiger by the tail than reading about it in a book.

If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy - if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places.

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.

I'm the only person who has ever found the right way to build an autobiography.

To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.