The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.

My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian-an early Indian. Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan. All those Salem witches were ancestors of mine. Your people made it tropical for them. . . . The first slave brought into New England out of Africa was an ancestor of mine-for I am a mixed breed, an infinitely shaded and exquisite Mongrel.

Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Every year you wait, long ago gets farther away.

The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

Custom is petrification, nothing but dynamite can dislodge it for a century.