“It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.”

“I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand.”

“I wonder if God created man because He was disappointed with the monkey.”

“There isn’t a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights.”

“I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me.”

“Wherefore, I beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought.”

“Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.”