A person who has a cat by the tail knows a whole lot more about cats than someone who has just read about them.

High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.

If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?

I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom's Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.

It was a place of sin, loose women, whiskey and gambling. It was no place for a good Presbyterian, and I did not long remain one.