Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.
I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world.
Few things are more irritating than when someone who is wrong is also very effective in making his point.
I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two million dollars.
Travel is lethal to prejudice.
It is poison – rank poison – to knuckle down to care and hardships. They must come to us all, albeit in different shapes, and we may not escape them. It is not possible. But we may swindle them out of half of their puissance with a stiff upper lip.
Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people.
God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention.
Labor in loneliness is irksome.
Unexpected money is a delight. The same sum is a bitterness when you expected more.
We chase phantoms half the days of our lives. It is well if we learn wisdom even then, and save the other half.
Who would find out that I am a natural fool if I kept always cool and never let nature come to the surface? Nobody.
My interest in my work dies a sudden and violent death when the work is done.
Human nature is the same everywhere; it deifies success, it has nothing but scorn for defeat.
Low comedies are written for the drawing-room, the kitchen and the stable, and if you cut out the kitchen and the stable the drawing-room can’t support the play by itself.
I never made a success of a lecture delivered in a church yet. People are afraid to laugh in a church. They can’t be made to do it in any possible way.
In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch.
A crowded police docket is the surest of all signs that trade is brisk and money plenty.
Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare.
An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth a fact that is recognized by the law of libel .