Preachers are always pleasant company when they are off duty.

A pessimist is a well-informed optimist.

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

He was such a good man that people hated to see him coming.

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.