All human rules are more or less idiotic.

The Mississippi River towns are comely, clean, well built, and pleasing to the eye, and cheering to the spirit. The Mississippi Valley is as reposeful as a dreamland, nothing worldly about it . . . nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon.

It used to take me all vacation to grow a new hide in place of the one they flogged off me during school term.

Wherefore, I beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought.

Tough times teach trust.

Information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious otter of roses out of the otter.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it's that they know so many things that just aren't so.