“There are some few people I respect and admire, but I don't think much of the species.”

“When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in his private heart no man much respects himself.”

“I have too much respect for the truth to drag it out on every trifling occasion.”

“so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people.”

“I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead--and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and then they would be honest so much earlier.”

“When the Lord finished the world, he pronounced it good. That is what I said about my first work, too. But Time, I tell you, Time takes the confidence out of these incautious opinions. It is more than likely that He thinks about the world, now, pretty much as I think about the Innocents Abroad. The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.”

“I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His works must be contemplated with respect.”