"If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have left him alone."
"The value of old age depends upon the person who reaches it. To some men of early performance it is useless. To others, who are late to develop, it just enables them to finish the job. "
"Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play. "
"Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change. "
"My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own."
"Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honour as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity."
"If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have left him alone."
"[I] prefer the large intention of an unskillful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker."
"Many people use 'sentimentalism' as a term of abuse for other people's decent feelings, and 'Realism' as a disguise for their own brutality."
"Why don't people understand that Mark Twain is not merely a great humorist? He is a very remarkable fellow in a very different way."
