He could charm an audience an hour on a stretch without ever getting rid of an idea.

It is the will of God that we must have critics and missionaries and congressmen and humorists, and we must bear the burden

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a priveleged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

When you want genuine music -- music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose, -- when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!

There is this trouble about special providences namely, there is so often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they got the children.