Happiness ain't a thing in itself -it's only a contrast with something that ain't pleasant. And so, as soon as the novelty is over and the force of the contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh.

The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.

There's a good spot tucked away somewhere in everybody. You'll be a long time finding it, sometimes.

The more you join with people in their joys and their sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you.

Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination?

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.

When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.