To know anything about oneself one must know all about others.
The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.
Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.
Examinations, sir, are pure humbug from beginning to end. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
I was disappointed in Niagara – most people must be disappointed in Niagara. Every American bride is taken there, and the sight of the stupendous waterfall must be one of the earliest, if not the keenest, disappointments in American married life.
No man should have a secret from his wife. She invariably finds it out.
One must have some sort of occupation nowadays. If I hadn’t my debts I shouldn’t have anything to think about.
Then there was a man who said, ‘I never knew what real happiness was until I got married; by then it was too late’
It is a dangerous thing to reform anyone.
Sometimes it takes courage to give into temptation.
The Americans are certainly hero-worshipers, and always take their heroes from the criminal classes.
He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.
Personally, I have a great admiration for stupidity.
I would not a bit mind sleeping in the cool grass in summer, and when winter came on sheltering myself by the warm close-thatched rick, or under the penthouse of a great barn, provided I had love in my heart.
By doing just a little every day, I can gradually let the task completely overwhelm me.
Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve. Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Progress in thought is the assertion of individualism against authority.
Anybody can write a three-volume novel. It merely requires a complete ignorance of both life and literature.
The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.
Nowadays to be intelligible is to be found out.