A sense of humor is the one thing no one will admit to not having.

Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection-that is the last and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement.

The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

It's not the parts of the Bible I don't know that worries me...it's the parts that I do.

The Bible is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. This Bible is built mainly out of fragments of older Bibles that had their day and crumbled to ruin. So it noticeably lacks in originality, necessarily. Its three or four most imposing and impressive events all happened in earlier Bibles; there are only two new things in it: hell, for one, and that singular heaven I have told you about.

Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

I should be sorry to think it was the publishers themselves they got up this entire little flutter to enable them to unload a book that was taking too much room in their cellars, but you can never tell what a publisher will do. I have been one myself.