What a world of trouble those who never marry escape! There are many happy matches, it is true, and sometimes "my dear," and "my love" come from the heart; but what sensible bachelor, rejoicing in his freedom and years of discretion, will run the tremendous risk?

I don't believe there is anything in the whole earth that you can't learn in Berlin except the German language.

The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Geniuses are people who dash off weird, wild, incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, & then go & get booming drunk & sleep in the gutter. Genius elevates a man to ineffable speres [sic] far above the vulgar world, & fills his soul with a regal contempt for the gross & sordid things of earth. It is probably on account of this that people who have genius do not pay their board, as a general thing.

I am not given to exaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it.

I have always been rather better treated in San Francisco than I actually deserved.

The southerner talks music.