A banker is somebody who lends you an umbrella & takes it away as soon as it starts raining.

Except a person be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave.

My land, the power of training! Of influence! Of education! It can bring a body up to believe anything.

I was an arden Hayes man, but that was natural, for I was pretty young at the time, I have since convinced myself that the political opinioins of a nation are of next to no value, in any case, but that what little rag of value they posess is to be found among the old, rather than among the young.

Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.

Names are not always what they seem.

Geniuses are people who dash off weird, wild, incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, & then go & get booming drunk & sleep in the gutter. Genius elevates a man to ineffable speres [sic] far above the vulgar world, & fills his soul with a regal contempt for the gross & sordid things of earth. It is probably on account of this that people who have genius do not pay their board, as a general thing.