“What is there that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man's breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery!”

“I have achieved my seventy years in the usual way: by sticking strictly to a scheme of life which would kill anybody else... I will offer here, as a sound maxim, this: That we can't reach old age by another man's road.”

“All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.”

“Ah, if he could only die temporarily!”

“My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.”

“Pay no heed to the average photographer's remarks upon "flat" and "weak" negatives. Probably he is flat, weak, stale, and unprofitable; your negative may be first-rate, and probably is if he does not approve of it.”

“Many photographers think they are photographing nature when they are only caricaturing her.”

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, photographers are worth a million.”

“What, no more ceremony? See, my women! Against the blown rose may they stop their nose That kneel'd unto the buds.”

“The soul of this man is his clothes.”

“Fair ladies, masked, are roses in their bud;Dismasked, the damask sweet commixture shown,Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown.”

“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”

“They have a plentiful lack of wit.”

“Thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows.”

“Things are often spoke and seldom meant.”

“All hoods make not monks.”

“Twas never merry world Since lowly feigning was called compliment.”

“Lord, I could not endure a husband with a beard on his face! I had rather lie in the woolen.”

“There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail.”

“I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster”

“Bounty, being free itself, thinks all others so.”

“He that is robbed, not wanting what is stolen, him not know t, and he's not robbed at all.”

“'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed, When not to be, receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed, Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.”

“Things are often spoke and seldom meant.”

“"Fair, kind, and true" is all my argument,"Fair, kind, and true" varying to other words;And in this change is my invention spent,Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.”

“Who has a book of all that monarchs do, He's more secure to keep it shut than shown; For vice repeated is like the wand'ring wind, Blows dust in others' eye, to spread itself; And yet the end of all is bought thus dear, The breath is gone, and the sore eyes see clear To stop the air would hurt them.”