Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

Talking of patriotism what humbug it is; it is a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn’t a foot of land in the world which doesn’t represent the ousting and re-ousting of a long line of successive “owners,” who each in turn, as “patriots,” with proud swelling hearts defended it against the next gang of “robbers” who came to steal it and did —and became swelling-hearted patriots in their turn.

[ Quoting an “American joke” :] In Boston theyask, How much does he know? in New York, How much is he worth? in Philadelphia, Whowere his parents?

He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn’tstraight.

He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly.

Even the clearest and most perfectcircumstantial evidence is likely to be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman: if you have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth.

Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that you didn’t see him do it.

Thanksgiving Day . Let us all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks, now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.

When I reflect upon the number ofdisagreeable people who I know have gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.