Seasickness: at first you are so sick you are afraid you will die, and then you are so sick you are afraid you won't die.

there was no crime in unconscious plagiarism; that I committed it everyday, that he committed it everyday, that every man alive on earth who writes or speaks commits it every day and not merely once or twice but every time he open his mouth… there is nothing of our own in it except some slight change born of our temperament, character, environment, teachings and associations

The cigar-box which the European calls a 'lift' needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like a man's patent purge-it works.

You may have noticed that the less I know about a subject the more confidence I have, and the more new light I throw on it.

The trouble with most of us is that we know too much that ain't so.

Schoolboy days are no happier than the days of afterlife, but we look back upon them regretfully because we have forgotten our punishments at school and how we grieved when our marbles were lost and our kites destroyed – because we have forgotten all the sorrows and privations of the canonized ethic and remember only its orchard robberies, its wooden-sword pageants, and its fishing holidays.

You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear.