Start it at no particular time of your life; wander at your free will all over your life; talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale.
The vast majority of the race whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind at heart and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves.
There are things which some people never attempt during their whole lives, but one of these is not poetry. Poetry attacks all human beings sooner or later, and, like the measles, is mild or violent according to the age of the sufferer.
I do see that there is an argument against suicide: the grief of the worshipers left behind, the awful famine in their hearts, these are too costly terms for the release.
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.
If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.
We all belong to the nasty stinking little human race, & of course it is not nice for God's beloved vermin to scoff at each other... Oh, we are a nasty little lot-& to think there are people who would like to save us & continue us. It won't happen if I have any influence.
We are strange beings, we seem to go free, but we go in chains - chains of training, custom, convention, association, environment - in a word, Circumstance, and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain.
I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can't be made to do it in any possible way.