rs, and the like--on small
pads, and bunches of these tiny sheets accumulated on his table and about
his room. I gathered up many of them then and afterward, and a few of
these characteristic bits may be offered here.

KNEE

It is at our mother's knee that we acquire our noblest & truest & highest
ideals, but there is seldom any money in them.

JEHOVAH

He is all-good. He made man for hell or hell for man, one or the other
--take your choice. He made it hard to get into heaven and easy to get
into hell. He commended man to multiply & replenish-what? Hell.

MODESTY ANTEDATES CLOTHES

& will be resumed when clothes are no more. [The latter part of this
aphorism is erased and underneath it he adds:]

MODESTY DIED

when clothes were born.

MODESTY DIED
when false modesty was born.

HISTORY

A historian who would convey the truth has got to lie. Often he must
enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to
see it.

MORALS

are not the important thing--nor enlightenment--nor civilization. A man
can do absolutely well without them, but he can't do without something to
eat. The supremest thing is the needs of the body, not of the mind &
spirit.

SUGGESTION

There is conscious suggestion & there is unconscious suggestion--both
come from outside--whence all ideas come.

DUELS

I think I could wipe out a dishonor by crippling the other man, but I
don't see how I could do it by letting him cripple me.

I have no feeling of animosity toward people who do not believe as I do;
I merely do not respect 'em. In some serious matters (relig.) I would
have them burnt.

I am old now and once was a sinner. I often think of it with a kind of
soft regret. I trust my days are numbered. I would not have that detail
overlooked.

She was always a girl, she was always young because her heart was young;
& I was young because she lived in my heart & preserved its youth from
decay.

He often busied himself working out more extensively some of the ideas
that came to him--moral ideas, he called them. One fancy which he
followed in several forms (some of them not within the privilege of
print) was that of an inquisitive little girl, Bessie, who pursues her
mother with difficult questionings.--[Under App