Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say that she did it with her teeth.

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

All our acts, reasoned and unreasoned, are selfish

A proud man is one who waits for a vacancy in the Trinity.

Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.

The good Lord didn't create anything without a purpose, but the fly comes close.

I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else.