[I began to unload] the pyramid of honors, civic and literary, which had been heaped on me by the headlong process of rewarding a popular success. One day, I sat down and wrote a wholesale lot of letters of resignation. When I finished, I didn't belong to a single authors club or patriotic society. I was myself again, whatever that was.

What we get in steerage is not the refuse, but the sinew and bone of all the nations.

It is not that I belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me.

The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school.

I want now to be of today. It is painful to be conscious of two worlds. The Wandering Jew in me seeks forgetfulness.

The czar always got his dues, no matter if it ruined a family.

His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.