One of life's most over-valued pleasures is sexual intercourse; of one of life's least appreciated pleasures in defecation.

for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.

He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.

Wisdom teaches us that none but birds should go out early, and that not even birds should do it unless they are out of worms.

Eating and sleeping are the only activities that should be allowed to interrupt a man's enjoyment of his cigar.

The North thinks it knows how to make corn bread, but this is a gross superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite as bad as the Northern imitation of it.

In America, we hurry-which is well; but when the day's work is done, we go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our business cares to bed with us...we burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a man's prime in Europe...What a robust people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges!