To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.

The difference between fiction and nonfiction is that fiction must be absolutely believable.

Always do what's right. That will gratify some and surprise the rest.

The average man is what his environment and his superstitions have made him; and their function is to make him an ass. He can't add up three or four new circumstances together and perceive what they mean; it is beyond him. He is not capable of observing for himself; he has to get everything at second-hand. If what are miscalled the lower animals were as silly as man is, they would all perish from the earth in a year.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.

How little a thing can make us happy when we feel that we have earned it.