“The truth is, a person's memory has no more sense that his conscience, and no appreciation whatever of values and proportions.”

“A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory.”

“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.”

“Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.”

“If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory!”

“It is said, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.”

“Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print -- I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:Gretchen: "Wilhelm, where is the turnip?"Wilhelm: "She has gone to the kitchen."Gretchen: "Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?"Wilhelm. "It has gone to the opera.”