Last week, I stated this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister, and now wish to withdraw that statement.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

Carlyle said 'a lie cannot live.' It shows that he did not know how to tell them.

If the bubble reputation can be obtained only at the cannon's mouth, I am willing to go there for it, provided the cannon is empty. If it is loaded my immortal and inflexible purpose is to get over the fence and go home. My invariable practice in war has been to bring out of every fight two-thirds more men than when I went in. This seems to me Napoleonic in its grandeur.

Your road is everything that a road ought to be...and yet you will not stay in it half a mile, for the reason that little, seductive, mysterious roads are always branching out from it on either hand, and as these curve sharply also and hide what is beyond, you cannot resist the temptation to desert your own chosen path and explore them.

After my marriage she edited everything I wrote. And what is more, she not only edited my works, she edited me.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.