The bourgeoisie’s weapon is starvation. If as a writer or artist you run counter to their narrow notions they simplyand silently withdraw your means of subsistence. I sometimes wonder how many people of talent are executed in this way every year.
The saddest object in civilization, and to my mind the greatest confession of its failure, is the man who can work, who wants work, and who is not allowed to work.
The greatest engineering is the engineering of men.
Marriage is a step so grave and decisive that it attracts light-headed, variable men by its very awfulness.
The spirit, Sir, is one of mockery.
Truth in spirit, not truth to the letter, is the true veracity.
And every day when I’ve been good, I get an orange after food.
Make up your mind to be happy.
Going for character: why not now, and where you stand?
We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented.
There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life.
This is still the strangest thing in all man’s travelling, that he should carry about with him incongruous memories.
Youth now flees on feathered foot.
They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener;.
How do you like to go up in a swing, Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing Ever a child can do!
A hanging in a good quarrel is an easy death they say, though I could never hear of any that came back to say so.
I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe.
Take care of each other.
Nobody speaks of a beautifful view for 5 minutes.
The child that is not clean and neat, With lots of toys and things to eat, He is a naughty child, I’m sure – Or else his dear Papa is poor.