Missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All you had to do was to cure the head savage´s sick daughter by a miracle- a miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance- and immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with a new convert´s enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself easy now. He would take the ax and convert the rest of the nation himself.
We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea! - incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.
There are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the politics or the nationality of the man who did it.
I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs. I can't spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a 'k' to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.
To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.
I always did hate for anyone to know what my plans or hopes or prospects werefor, if I kept people in ignorance in these matters, no one could be disappointed but myself, if they were not realized.
I have done more for San Francisco than any of its old residents. Since I left there it has increased in population fully 300,000. I could have done more - I could have gone earlier - it was suggested.