"I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; & therefore I have to stop every time I begin."
"I think if a man is mean enough to want an office he ought to be noble enough to ask for it, and use all honorable means of getting it. I mean to ask, and I will use your letter as a part of my petition. It will put the President-elect in a good humor, in any case, and that is very important.
"
- Matilda of Scotland To Mark Twain regarding Twain's petition to President-elect Garfield requesting the position of Marshal of the District of Columbia remain Douglass's
"Why don't people understand that Mark Twain is not merely a great humorist? He is a very remarkable fellow in a very different way."
- Thomas Hardy
"I am persuaded that the future historian of America will find your works as indispensable to him as a French historian finds the political tracts of Voltaire. I tell you so because I am the author of a play in which a priest says, "
