"Tell him you’ll pay any fine within reason. That dragon-cod can’t even read his own name unless it’s written in gold ink."

““There may be someone here who knows less about all this than I do,” Clemens said, “but I can’t imagine who.”

“It is not a very interesting night market, anyway. No wonderful things are sold there, though often one wonders, next day, how one could have bought them...”

“Though you expel Nature with a pitchfork, she will always return.”

“Clearly this was no time to ask if they should first define their terms. Nor, for that matter, had Socrates had to define the bowl of hemlock.”

“Hmm...hmm. A stag hunt. To what elaborate lengths the equestrian classes go in order to draw out the simple business of butchering venison.”

“It was a distinction without a difference.”