His head was an hour-glass; it could stow an idea, but it had to do it a grain at a time, not the whole idea at once.

Man never creates, he only recombines the lines and colors of his own existance.

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years. See what happens when you "know it all", at any stage of life? Farther down the track you may see clearly how certain personal opinions, held onto too tightly, could be fogging up the view, and providing incorrect insight. Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

...mastery of the art and spirit of the Germanic language enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.

In the small town of Hannibal, Missouri, when I was a boy, everybody was poor, but didn't know it; and everybody was comfortable and did know it.