Nine-tenths of the world is entertained by scandalous rumors, which are never dissected until they are dead and, when pricked, collapse like an empty bladder.

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures and that is character.

It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a bible-reading people. The principles of the bible are the groundwork of human freedom.

Go West, young man, go West. There is health in the country, and room away from our crowds of idlers and imbeciles.

Common sense is very uncommon.

The darkest hour in any man's life is when he sits down to plan how to get money without earning it.

We are not one people. We are two peoples. We are a people for Freedom and a people for Slavery. Between the two, conflict is inevitable.

I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot.

A cigar has "...a fire at one end and a fool at the other."

Ah! if the pulpit would practice what it preaches, then all would be well.

Journalism kills you, but it keeps you alive as long as you're doing it.

In my view, any government whose state is perpetually at war, and remains so in spite of initiatives to make peace, is incompetent and unfit and should resign.

Reason, in the end, will win against unreason.

I felt the joy of knowing that in some small way I had fought back against someone who wanted to rule me against my will. I said no.

All real education is the architecture of the soul.

Wherever there were horses or ponies the mushrooms always sprang up.

The Press blew, the public stared, hands flew out like a million little fishes after bread.

Faith alone saves, but the faith that saves is not alone.

Good prose almost always requires both showing and telling, scenes and summary, the two basic components of creative prose.

Take the kinks out your mind, not your hair.

Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. Be true to your own mind and conscience, your heart and your soul. So only can you be true to God.