Humor is like a frog; if you dissect it, it dies.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.

My experience with horses is that they never throw away a chance to go lame.

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.

The [Kodak is] the only witness I have encountered in my long experience that I couldn't bribe.