Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don’t even arise.

The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. 

Words pay no debts.

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

Writing cannot express words fully; words cannot express thoughts fully.

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?

Slang is as old as speech and the congregating together of people in cities. It is the result of crowding and excitement and artificial life.

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

Under all speech that is good for anything, there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as eternity; speech is shallow as time.