Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.

The laws of Nature, that is to say the laws of God, plainly made every human being a law unto himself, we must steadfastly refuse to obey those laws, and we must as steadfastly stand by the conventions which ignore them, since the statutes furnish us peace, fairly good government, and stability, and therefore are better for us than the laws of God, which would soon plunge us into confusion and disorder and anarchy if we should adopt them.

Apparently one of the most uncertain things in the world is the funeral of a religion.

He is now rising from affluence to poverty.

Imagine, if you will, that I am an idiot. Then, imagine that I am also a Congressman. But, alas, I repeat myself.

I will now claim - until dispossesed - that I was the first person in the world to apply the typewriter to literature. ... The early machine was full of caprices, full of defects- devilish ones. It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells. ... He took it home to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered.