All the freedom enjoyed in America, beyond what is enjoyed in England, is enjoyed solely by the disorderly at the expense of the orderly.

The Yankee: In acuteness and perseverance, he resembles the Scotch. In frugal neatness, he resembles the Dutch. But in truth, a Yankee is nothing else on earth but himself.

I very seldom, during my whole stay in the country, heard a sentence elegantly turned, and correctly pronounced from the lips of an American.

there is less alms-giving in America than in any other Christian country on the face of the globe. It is not in the temper of the people either to give or to receive.

The total and universal want of manners, both in males and females, is ... remarkable ... that polish which removes the coarser and rougher parts of our nature is unknown and undreamed of.

When newspapers are the principal vehicles of the wit and wisdom of a people, the higher graces of composition can hardly be looked for.

To an American writer, I should think it must be a flattering distinction to escape the admiration of the newspapers.

I have listened to much dull and heavy conversation in America, but rarely to any that I could strictly call silly (if I except the every where privileged class of very young ladies).

I draw from life - but I always pulp my acquaintance before serving them up. You would never recognize a pig in a sausage.

It seems hardly fair to quarrel with a place because its staple commodity is not pretty, but I am sure I should have liked Cincinnati much better if the people had not dealt so very largely in hogs.

It is rarely [Americans] dine in society, except in taverns and boarding-houses. Then they eat with the greatest possible rapidity, and in total silence.

Let us not burthen our remembrance withA heaviness that's gone.

In Buddhism we would say that you are lazy... Despising yourself, thinking you are no good, saying 'I can't do this.' This is the mind of weakness. You must work to overcome it .

I had no knowledge of divine help, and all the world lost faith in gradual progress.

To realize the American dream, the most important thing to understand is that it belongs to everybody. It's a human dream. If you understand this and work very hard, it is possible.

My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.

Men study science as god not the God of science.

You have to pinpoint the market, and if you don't pinpoint the market, you won't be successful.

I could get into bed with James Bond, then take my false leg off and it would really be a gun.

I feel like I missed out on the regular high school social life, but that's the way I chose to be.

I think the collision between the First and Third world is going to become more and more conspicuous. It's the big cliff that we've all got to climb.