“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.”

“I would tell myself that I was about to address the largest mass assembly of idiots ever gathered in the history of mankind.”

“If you want me to speak for two minutes, it will take me three weeks of preparation. If you want me to speak for thirty minutes, it will take me a week to prepare. If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready now.”

“There is nothing like oratory, it is a skill that can turn a commoner into a king.”

“When we are high and airy hundreds sayThat if we hold that flight they'll leave the place,While those same hundreds mock another dayBecause we have made our art of common things.”

“A lot of guys have had a lot of fun joking about Henry Ford because he admitted one time that he didn't know history. He don't know it, but history will know him. He has made more history than his critics ever read.”

“We're not trying to entertain the critics ... I'll take my chances with the public.”

“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”

“Pardon, gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that have dared on this unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object.”

“Praise us as we are tasted, allow us as we prove.”

“A great while ago the world begun,With hey, ho, the wind and the rain;But that's all one, our play is done,And we'll strive to please you every day.”