The youth of an art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period. When it has come to the knowledge of good and evil it is stronger, but we care less about it.
— Samuel Butler
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.
A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.
A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
To know God better is only to realize how impossible it is that we should ever know him at all. I know not which is more childish to deny him, or define him.
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.
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.
People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.
There is no bore like a clever bore.
We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success.
Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.
God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since.
God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.
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.
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions.
I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted.
Our minds want clothes as much as our bodies.
I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.
The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
Be virtuous and you will be vicious.
And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
The dons of Oxford and Cambridge are too busy educating the young men to be able to teach them anything.
It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.
It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out.
It is tact that is golden, not silence.
Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental.
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.
Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.
Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about him.
If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
One of the first businesses of a sensible man is to know when he is beaten, and to leave off fighting at once.
There is no true gracefulness which is not epitomized goodness.
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
Young people have a marvelous faculty of either dying or adapting themselves to circumstances.
The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
The want of money is the root of all evil.
