It is often the case that a man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one.

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.

A religion that comes of thought, and study, and deliberate conviction, sticks best. The revivalized convert who is scared in the direction of heaven because he sees hell yawn suddenly behind him, not only regains confidence when his scare is over, but is ashamed of himself for being scared, and often becomes more hopelessly and malignantly wicked than he was before.

How superbly brave is the Englishman in the presence of the awfulest forms of danger and death; and how abject in the presence of any and all forms of hereditary rank.

But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.

When I take up one of Jane Austen's books ... I feel like a barkeep entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his sensation would be and his private comments. He would not find the place to his taste, and he would probably say so.

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.