In our day we don't allow a hundred and thirty years to elapse between glimpses of a marvel. If somebody should discover a creek in the county next to the one that the North Pole is in, Europe and America would start fifteen costly expeditions thither; one to explore the creek, and the other fourteen to hunt for each other.

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words -- 365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

To place man properly at the present time, he stands somewhere between the angels and the French.

Humor is the good natured side of a truth.

I told you this would happen. But, no, you had to go for the buffet, didn't you?

In the real world, nothing happens at the right place at the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to correct that.

Let us be grateful to Adam: he cut us out of the blessing of idleness and won for us the curse of labor.