I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing to be good.

Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it

Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made (man) is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain.

I speak French with timidity, and not flowingly--except when excited. When using that language I have often noticed that I have hardly ever been mistaken for a Frenchman, except, perhaps, by horses; never, I believe, by people.

A person who has a cat by the tail knows a whole lot more about cats than someone who has just read about them.

On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there's any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.

I have damaged my intellect trying to imagine why a man should want to invent a repeating clock, and how another man could be found to lust after it and buy it. The man who can guess these riddles is far on the way to guess why the human race was invented - which is another riddle which tires me.