For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
— Samuel Butler
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Life is one long process of getting tired.
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions.
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world.
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.
Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
A man should be just cultured enough to be able to look with suspicion upon culture at first, not second hand.
People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
Logic is like the sword - those who appeal to it, shall perish by it.
God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
The oldest books are only just out to those who have not read them.
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.
The voice of the Lord is the voice of common sense, which is shared by all that is.
Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
We all like to forgive, and love best not those who offend us least, nor who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
Life is not an exact science, it is an art.
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.
All truth is not to be told at all times.
