I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I'm not feeling so well myself.

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit …

He had only one vanity; he thought he could give advice better than any other person.

[Citing a familiar 'American joke':] In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?

The whole Earth is the Sepulchre of famous men; and their story is not graven only on Stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible sym…

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones, The labor of an age in piled stones, Or that his hallowed relics should be hid Under a star-y-pointing pyrami…

And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie, That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.