“Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
“On with dance, let joy be unconfined, is my motto; whether there's any dance to dance or any joy to unconfined.”
“Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.”
“It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.”
“I have been complimented many times and they always embarrass me; I always feel that they have not said enough.”
“I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won t.”
“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain't so.”
“Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”
“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”
“There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.”
“I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.”
“Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.”
“Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.”
“A banker is a fellow who lends his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”
“The way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.”
“To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.”
“More than once I had seen a noble who had gotten his enemy at a disadvantage stop to pray before cutting his throat.”
“If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are any commonplace people.”
“The older we grow the greater becomes our wonder at how much ignorance one can contain without bursting one's clothes.”
“We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race: he brought death into the world.”
“When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.”
“It is a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old.”
“Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing, but cabbage with a college education.”
“I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
“All say, How hard it is that we have to die -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.”
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”
“There was never a century nor a country that was short of experts who knew the Deity's mind and were willing to reveal it.”
“I did not attend his funeral; but I wrote a nice letter saying I approved of it. [About a politician who had recently died]”
“It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
“He has been a doctor a year now and has had two patients, no, three, I think -- yes, it was three; I attended their funerals.”