When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them. That is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

The kingly office is entitled to no respect. It was originally procured by the highwayman's methods. It remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is no more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate.

When a man arrives at great prosperity God did it: when he falls into disaster he did it himself.

When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.

As a rule, we go about with masks, we go about looking honest, and we are able to conceal ourselves all through the day.

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.