Every generalization is dangerous, especially this one.

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.

A man who keeps company with glaciers comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.

Who is this Renaissance? Where did he come from? Who gave him permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs?

Kindness is a language herd by deaf men and felt by blind men.

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 only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report - the native novelist. ... And when a thousand able novels have been written, there you have the soul of the people; and not anywhere else can these be had.