I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature. ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells. ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered.

I am able to say that while I am not ruggedly well, I am not ill enough to excite an undertaker.

You can tell German wine from vinegar by the label.

Indeed, none but the Deity can tell what is good luck and what is bad before the returns are all in.

No temperance society which is well officered and which has the real good of our fellow-men in view, will ever get drunk save in the seclusion of its temperance hall.

Missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All you had to do was to cure the head savage´s sick daughter by a miracle- a miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance- and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convert´s enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself easy now. He would take the ax and convert the rest of the nation himself.

When you catch an adjective, kill it.