He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief.

Never a lip is curved with pain that can’t be kissed into smiles again.

There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death.

Which I wish to remark – And my language is plain, – That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar.

A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.

Perhaps there is no gift of nature that requires as little exertion on the part of the owner as personal beauty. I am not certain but that it is this very absence of effort which excites our admiration.

For the glory born of Goodness Never dies, And its flag is not half-masted In the skies.

The creator who could put a cancer in a believer's stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.

Besides writing, I have been teaching myself to 'develop' my own photographic plates, and I haven't a stick of clothing or an exposed finger that isn't stained. I sit for hours in a dark-room feeling as if I were a very elderly Faust at some dreadful incantation, and come out of it, blinding at the light, like a Bastille prisoner. And yet I am not successful!

Love differs from all the other contagious diseases: the last time a man is exposed to it, he takes it most readily, and has it the worst!