I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don’t want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.
He is very imprudent, a dog; he never makes it his business to inquire whether you are in the right or the wrong, never asks whether you are rich or poor, silly or wise, sinner or saint. You are his pal. That is enough for him.
There are the goods; if you want them, you can have them. If you do not want them, they would almost rather that you did not come and talk about them.
Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.
But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.
It seems to me so shocking to see the precious hours of a man’s life – the priceless moments that will never come back to him again – being wasted in a mere brutish sleep.
It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.
Splendid cheeses they were, ripe and mellow, and with a two hundred horse-power scent about them that might have been warranted to carry three miles, and knock a man over at two hundred yards.
Time is but the shadow of the world upon the background of Eternity.
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.
Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs.
Life is a thing to be lived, not spent; to be faced, not ordered. Life is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of cards, one’s hand by skill to be made the best of.
The shy man does have some slight revenge upon society for the torture it inflicts upon him.
The less taste a person has in dress, the more obstinate he always seems to be.
A boy’s muscles move quicker than his thoughts.
Eat good dinners and drink good wine; read good novels if you have the leisure and see good plays; fall in love, if there is no reason why you should not fall in love; but do not pore over influenza statistics.
All is vanity and everybody’s vain. Women are terribly vain. So are men – more so, if possible.
A Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull.
Evil thought is a dangerous pet. It is safer to play with it from behind the iron bars of circumstance.
We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself.