- Total abstinence is so excellent a thing that it cannot be carried to too great an extent. In my passion for it I even carry it so far as to totally abstain from total abstinence itself. 
- Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen. 
- The average American may not know who his grandfather was. But the American was, however, one degree better off than the average Frenchman who, as a rule, was in considerable doubt as to who his father was. 
- Concerning the difference between man and the jackass: some observers hold that there isn’t any. But this wrongs the jackass. 
- There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him–early. 
- There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he less savage than the other savages. 
- Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society. 
- 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. 
- The report of my illness grew out of his (James Clemens) illness. The report of my death was an exaggeration. 
- Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. 
- Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, and those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied with drink. 
- Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. 
- Ah, well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God’s fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect. 
- I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s. 
- I would rather have my ignorance than another man’s knowledge, because I have so much more of it. 
- In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made school boards. 
- Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry. 
- Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about. 
- To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble. 
- It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. Contributor: Anon 


















