We live in the age of the overworked and the undereducated.
When I went to America I had two secretaries, one for autographs, one for locks of hair. Within six months the one had died of writer’s cramp, the other was completely bald.
Life under a good government is rarely dramatic; life under a bad government is always so.
Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob. It is through the voice of one crying in the wilderness that the ways of the gods must be prepared.
Every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame, And bound with bars lest Christ should see How men their brothers maim.
A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.
Perhaps one never seems so much at ones ease as when one has to play a part.
Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws.
The only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.
Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and the human being becomes a bore.
Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation.
The essence of thought, as the essence of life, is growth.
Every thing to be true must become a religion.
There is no country in the world where machinery is so lovely as in America.
I never saw so many well-dressed, well-fed, business-looking Bohemians in my life.
As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.
Life is a great disappointment.
It is love, and not German philosophy, that is the true explanation of the world, whatever may be the explanation of the next.
Im Krieg machen die Starken die Schwachen zu Sklaven, im Frieden machen die Reichen die Armen zu Sklaven.
That is the mission of art – to make us pause and look at a thing a second time.