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.

To write without pay until somebody offers pay. If nobody offers pay within three years, the candidate may look upon this circumstance with the most implicit confidence as the sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.

Anyone who can only think of one way to spell a word obviously lacks imagination.

It is not best to use our morals weekdays, it gets them out of repair for Sunday.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born --a hundred million years --and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.