An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before.
The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.
Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
Our opinions do not really blossom into fruition until we have expressed them to someone else.
Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's I mean.
Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
[Humanity] has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.