A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, just as anhonest man in politics shines more than hewould elsewhere.

The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by abell; she gits up by a bell—everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.

Anywhere is better than Paris. Paris the cold, Paris the drizzly, Paris the rainy, Paris theDamnable. More than a hundred years ago, somebody asked Quin, “Did you ever see such a winter in all your life before?” “Yes,” said he, “last summer.” I judge he spent his summer in Paris.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucketof whitewash and a long-handled brush. Hesurveyed the fence, and all gladness left himand a deep melancholy settled down upon hisspirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feethigh. Life to him seemed hollow, and existencebut a burden.

He [Tom Sawyer] had discovered a great law ofhuman action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great andwise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do andthat Play consists of whatever a body is notobliged to do.

The chances are that a man cannot get into congress now without resorting to arts and means that should render him unfit to gothere.

The Gilded Age.

To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature Congressman.

[ On women in the United States :] They live in the midst of a country where there is no end to the laws and no beginning to the execution of them.

The jury system puts a ban upon intelligenceand honesty, and a premium upon ignorance, stupidity, and perjury.