There is nothing more frustrating than a good example.

The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother.

The poetry is all in the anticipation, for there is none in reality.

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

The community is eminently Portuguese - that is to say, it is slow, poor, shiftless, sleepy, and lazy.

For all the talk you hear about knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instinct is worth forty of it for real unerringness.

If you invent two or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is bound to happen to them -- you can't help it; and then it will take you the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that occurrence, and so first thing you know, there's your book all finished up and never cost you an idea.