The technical history of modern harmony is a history of growth of toleration by the human ear of chords that at first sounded discordant and senseless to the main body of contemporary professional musicians.
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
If all the Churches of Europe closed their doors until the drums ceased rolling they would act as a most powerful reminder that though the glory of war is a famous and ancient glory, it is not the final glory of God.
Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their kind. It is the deed that teaches not the name we give it.
Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.
Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.
Nothing makes a man so selfish as work.
The greatest thing in life is to die young – but delay it as long as possible.
It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.
When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age, ask them how they would like to life in a stationary one, and do without change.
Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.
Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.
I’m only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler; I don’t like beer.
Alcohol is a very necessary article. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
A day’s work is a day’s work, neither more nor less, and the man or woman who does it needs a day’s sustenance, a night’s repose and due leisure, whether they be painter or ploughman.
Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.
Violence is the repartee of the illiterate.
There is nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school.
Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.
Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.