What marriage is to morality, a properly conducted licensed liquor traffic is to sobriety.

That reminds me to remark, in passing, that the very first official thing I did, in my administration-and it was on the first day of it, too-was to start a patent office; for I knew that a country without a patent office and good patent laws was just a crab, and couldn't travel any way but sideways or backways.

The world doesn't owe you anything. It was here first.

Do good when you can, and charge when you think they will stand it.

If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people

It is easier to stay out than get out.

I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called,) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.