The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.

It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected.

There is but one art, to omit! Oh, if I knew how to omit I would ask no other knowledge. A man who knows how to omit would make an Iliad of a daily paper.

I wish these flies would piss off.

And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thought.

And every day when I've been good, I get an orange after food.