"A powerful agent is the right word. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and electrically prompt."

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"When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?"

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"Prosperity is the best protector of principle."

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"James Ross Clemens, a cousin of mine, was seriously ill two or three weeks ago in London, but is well now. The report of my illness grew out of his illness; the report of my death was an exaggeration."

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"Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? [...] Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity."

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"Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will."

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"The best known names in the Territory of Nevada were those belonging to these long-tailed heroes of the revolver. Orators, Governors, capitalists and leaders of the legislature enjoyed a degree of fame, but it seemed local and meagre when contrasted with the fame of such men as Sam Brown, Jack Williams, Billy Mulligan, Farmer Pease, Sugarfoot Mike, Pock-Marked Jake, El Dorado Johnny, Jack McNabb, Joe McGee, Jack Harris, Six-fingered Pete, etc., etc."

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"The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal."

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"Your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, Money, Persuasion, Supplication, Persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug,—push it a little—crowd it a little—weaken it a little, century by century: but only Laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand."

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"To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology."

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"We all do no end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is public opinion. It is held in reverence. Some think it the voice of God."

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"[Citing a familiar "American joke":] In Boston they ask, How much does he know? In New York, How much is he worth? In Philadelphia, Who were his parents?"

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"Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place."

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"I have seen Chinamen abused and maltreated in all the mean, cowardly ways possible to the invention of a degraded nature, but I never saw a policeman interfere in the matter and I never saw a Chinaman righted in a court of justice for wrongs thus done him."

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"We believe that out of the public school grows the greatness of a nation."

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"An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar."

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"Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches."

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"No California gentleman or lady ever abuses or oppresses a Chinaman, under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the east. Only the scum of the population do it; they and their children. They, and, naturally and consistently, the policemen and politicians, likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum, there as well as elsewhere in America."

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"I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell."

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"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

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"We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground."

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"Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man — the biography of the man himself cannot be written."

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"It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible."

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"Virtue never has been as respectable as money."

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"Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country, and made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such a son. It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up. No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his, which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel."

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"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also."

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"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

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"When in doubt, tell the truth."

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"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed."

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"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

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"I would throw out the old maxim, ‘My country, right or wrong,’ etc., and instead I would say, ‘My country when she is right.’ Because patriotism is supporting your country all the time, but your government only when it deserves it."

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"O water of the river Ganges, thou rememberst the day When our torrent flooded thy valleys..."

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"Muslims are we, the country is ours, China and Arabia is ours, India is ours. Under the shadow of swords we have grown up. The crescent scabbard is our national emblem."

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"I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism."

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"Democracy is a system where people are counted but not weighed."

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"It cannot be denied that Islam, regarded as an ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity – by which expression I mean a social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific ethical ideal – has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness of their own."

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"I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India."

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"Let the lament of this lonely bulbul pierce the hearts of all, Arouse the hearts of the sleeping, with this my clarion call. Transfused with fresh blood, a new compact of faith we'll sign. Let our hearts thirst again for a sip of the vintage wine. What if the pitcher be Persian, from Hejaz is the wine I serve. What if the song be Indian, it is Hejazi in its verve."

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"The immediacy of mystic experience simply means that we know God just as we know other objects. God is not a mathematical entity or a system of concepts mutually related to one another and having no reference to experience."

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"Why must I forever lose, forever forgo profit that is my due, Sunk in the gloom of evenings past, no plans for the morrow pursue. Why must I all attentive be to the nightingale's lament? Friend, am I as dumb as a flower? Must I remain silent? My theme makes me bold, makes my tongue more eloquent. Dust be in my mouth, against Allah I make complaint."

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"To this convention you must re-state as clearly and as strongly as possible, the political objective of Indian Muslims as a distinct political unit in the country. It is absolutely necessary to tell the world both inside and outside India that the economic problem is not the only problem in the country. From the Muslim point of view the cultural problem is of much greater consequence to most Indian Muslims. At any rate it is not less important than the economic problem."

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"Every land which belongs to God is our land."

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"Ends and purposes, whether they exist as conscious or subconscious tendencies, form the warp and woof of our conscious experience."

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"You tell us who were they who pulled down the gates of Khyber? Who were they that reduced the city that was the pride of Caesar? Fake gods that men had made, who did break and shatter? Who routed infidel armies and destroyed them with bloody slaughter? Who put out and made cold the 'sacred' flame in Iran? Who retold the story of the one God, Yazdan?"

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"The history of the preceding Muslim dynasties had taught Aurangzeb that the strength of Islam did not depend ... so much on the goodwill of the people of this land as on the strength of the ruling race."

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"The more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition."

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"The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things."

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"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."

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"Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself. She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance. She is a veil, rather than a mirror."

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"After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second glass you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world."

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