We have had no good comic operas of late, because the real world has been more comic than any possible opera.
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven’t got any.
Aesthetes never do anything but what they are told.
The aesthete aims at harmony rather than beauty. If his hair does not match the mauve sunset against which he is standing, he hurriedly dyes his hair another shade of mauve. If his wife does not go with the wall-paper, he gets a divorce.
When giving treats to friends or children, give them what they like, emphatically not what is good for them.
I agree with the realistic Irishman who said he preferred to prophesy after the event.
Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.
My attitude toward progress has passed from antagonism to boredom. I have long ceased to argue with people who prefer Thursday to Wednesday because it is Thursday.
Men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
The modern world is a crowd of very rapid racing cars all brought to a standstill and stuck in a block of traffic.
To hurry through one’s leisure is the most unbusiness-like of actions.
This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities.
The past is not what it was.
War is not the best way of settling differences; it is the only way of preventing their being settled for you.
How quickly revolutions grow old; and, worse still, respectable.
America is the only country ever founded on a creed.
The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.
Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern.
If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will have no answer except slanging or silence.
He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative.