But they (the infantry) had no use for boys of twelve and thirteen, and before I had a chance in another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away.

An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.

When the human race has once acquired a superstition, nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it.

My land, the power of training! Of influence! Of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything.

Whatever you have lived, you can write & by hard work & a genuine apprenticeship, you can learn to write well; but what you have not lived you cannot write, you can only pretend to write it.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure--because he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps;but otherwise he is just as much a human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman.