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

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.

I am losing enough sleep to supply a worn-out army.

If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.

It is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.

A policeman in plain clothes is a man; in his uniform he is ten. Clothes and title are the most potent thing, the most formidable influence, in the earth. They move the human race to willing and spontaneous respect for the judge, the general, the admiral, the bishop, the ambassador, the frivolous earl, the idiot duke, the sultan, the king, the emperor. No great title is efficient without clothes to support it.