The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.

Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others-his last breath.

It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.

Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.

Human beings seem to be a poor invention. If they are the noblest works of God where is the ignoblest?

The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.

Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.