One learns through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect

Never let formal education get in the way of your learning.

Humor is tragedy plus time

What's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?

Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat.
- Notebook, 1894

The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.