The proverb says that Providence protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know it because I have tested it. - Mark Twain

. . . tyrannical, murderous, rapacious, and morally rotten as they [the nobility] were, they were deeply and enthusiastically religious.

I was convinced that Lake Como was a large basin of water similar to the Tahoe, also surrounded by immense mountains whose slopes reach the shores, but here the lake is not a basin, since the banks are articulated like those of a stream and is a quarter or two thirds wide of the Mississippi. Along the coast there is not a single strip of flat land, but endless chains of mountains which suddenly emerge from the lake surface and rise towards the sky for one hundred or two hundred feet, constantly varying in shape. The rocky ridges are covered with numerous plant species and dotted with white villas that peek through lush foliage. Even on the top of the promontory we saw pretty little houses perched on picturesque pinnacles, more than a thousand feet above our heads.

Whatever a man's age, he can reduce it several years by putting a bright-colored flower in his button hole.