“A good lawyer knows the law; a clever one takes the judge to lunch.”

“It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense”

“He had discovered a great law of human 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.”

“when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.”

“One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;”

“Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped.-from the Prefatory”

“it don’t make no diference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does I would pison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person’s insides, and yet ain’t no good, nohow.”