NOTEBOOK

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience:
this is the ideal life" (written in the Archduchess's album).

Concerning the difference between man and the jackass:
some observers hold that there isn't any. But this wrongs
the jackass.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we
have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom
of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never
to exercise either of them.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction
is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't.

Have a place for everything and keep the thing some-
where else. This is not advice, it is merely custom.

There are several good protections against temptations
but the surest is cowardice.

Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops;
man would have made him with an appetite for sand—I
mean a man with the least little bit of common sense.

There are many scapegoats for our blunders, but the
most popular one is Providence.

When people do not respect us we are sharply offended;
yet deep down in his heart no man much respects himself.

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious
possession—what there is of it.

Some of these observations he used in his books.
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