Be good and you will be lonely.

I don't believe any of you have ever read Paradise Lost, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic ... something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Gold in its native state is but dull, unornamental stuff, and only lowborn metals excite the admiration of the ignorant with an ostentatious glitter. However, like the rest of the world, I still go on underrating men of gold and glorifying men of mica.

I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.

Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.

I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life. And yet-I am inclined to expect one.

The writing begins when you’ve finished. Only then do you know what you’re trying to say.