“Grosse plodders they were all, that had some learning and reading, but no wit to make use of it.”

“His wits were coming back to him, however slowly. That was good. His wits were all he had.”

“I remember that he was always trying to expound to me in his broken Russian some special system of astronomy he had invented. I was told that he had once published it, but the learned world had only laughed at him. I think his wits were a little deranged.”

“I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books.”

“Unlike some men, I had never drunk for boldness or charm or wit; I had used alcohol for precisely what it was, a depressant to check the mental exhilaration produced by extended sobriety.”

“There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.”