“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.”

“There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it.”

“The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal”

“He who does not lie does not know what truth is.”

“I am not bound to please thee with my answer.”

“Things are often spoke and seldom meant.”

“Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief.”

“Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.”

“The trouble with most of us is that we know too much that ain't so.”

“Ignorance is not, not knowing something. It is knowing what isn't so.”

“I say, without characters, fame lives long.”

“Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he was boasting, The less you speak of your greatness, the more shall I think of it.”

“'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.”

“Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.”

“Love's heralds should be thoughts,Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beamsDriving back shadows over low'ring hills.Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw Love,And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings.”

“Power and speed be hands and feet.”

“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.”