 The truest characters of ignorance are vanity and pride and arrogance. |
| Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing. |
| Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so. |
| A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. |
| The seven deadly sins: Want of money, bad health, bad temper, chastity, family ties, knowing that you know things, and believing in the Christian religion. |
| He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us. |
| If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success. |
| Letters are like wine; if they are sound they ripen with keeping. A man should lay down letters as he does a cellar of wine. |
| Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure. |
| Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it. |
| He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still. |
| The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation. |
| My main wish is to get my books into other people's rooms, and to keep other people's books out of mine. |
| When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once. |
| From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right. |
| Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him. |
| Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. |
| God cannot alter the past, though historians can. |
| The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously. |
| All of the animals except for man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it. |
