The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that wears a fig-leaf.

Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

I think a compliment ought always to precede a complaint, where one is possible, because it softens resentment and insures for the complaint a courteous and gentle reception.

They say that you can't live by bread alone, but I can live on compliments.

If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive ... but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.

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