It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech. Overnight success is a fallacy. It is preceded by a great deal of preparation. Ask any successful person how they came to this point in their lives, and they will have a story to tell.

Don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that always happens?

There's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next.

If there are no cigars in heaven, I shall not go.

You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.