It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books. [] It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: he made the books and he died.

A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

Idleness breeds our better virtues.

When grown people speak of the innocence of children, they dont really know what they mean. Pressed, they will go a step further and say, Well, ignorance then. The child is neither. There is no crime which a boy of eleven had not envisaged long ago. His only innocence is, he may not be old enough to desire the fruits of it...his ignorance is, he does not know how to commit it...

This is a free country. Folks have a right to send me letters, and I have a right not to read them.

If a story is in you, it has to come out.