If books are not good company, where shall I find it?

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

Crowds stand around all day long and criticise that bridge, and find fault with it, and tell with unlimited frankness how it ought to have been planned, and how they would have built it had the city granted them the $14,000 it cost. It is really refreshing to hang around these and listen to them. A foreigner would come to the conclusion that all America was composed of inspired professional bridge builders.

The finest clothing made is a person's own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

History never repeats itself; at best it sometimes rhymes.

I have seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficient institution. In all my experiences of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right.

Hero: Person in a book who does things which he can't and girl marries him for it.