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

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.

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.

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

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.

With teamwork, any little contribution you make yields greater output when it meets the contribution of others, and guess who gets the plus? Everyone in the team!

In most horror films, you don't really get to understand why this character is the way he is.

I'm determined to stand whether God will deliver me or not.

In all my novels, I deal with the many problems and prejudices which exist for Black people in Britain today.

The belief that life was hard and often its worst battles were fought in private, that it was possible to walk through fear and come out scorched but still breathing.

Of course, if one ignores contradictory observations, one can claim to have an "elegant" or "robust" theory. But it isn't science.

The smallest errors are always the best. [Fr., Les plus courtes erreurs sont toujours les meilleures.]

But it’s only by having some distance from the world that you can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing with it.

If someone asks, But what is Love? Answer, Dissolving the will.

The curse of fatherhood is distance, and the good fathers spend their lives trying to overcome it.