The less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

My soul is an entangled knot, upon a liquid vortex wrought by Intellect in the Unseen residing, and thine doth like a convict sit, with marline-spike untwisting it, only to find its knottiness abiding.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It puts me on a far higher place than any politician.

First, of things relating to animals; secondly, of irrational creatures; thirdly of plants; fourthly, of ceremonies; fifthly, of manners; sixthly, of cases or edicts or quarrels; seventhly, of cases that are impossible in nature [paradoxes], as, for instance, of those things which, the more is taken from them, the more they grow. And reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.