Opinions have vested interests just as men have.
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
We are not won by arguments that we can analyse but by tone and temper, by the manner which is the man himself.
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
No mistake is more common and more fatuous than appealing to logic in cases which are beyond her jurisdiction.
I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
A friend who cannot at a pinch remember a thing or two that never happened is as bad as one who does not know how to forget.
Words are clothes that thoughts wear.
If people who are in a difficulty will only do the first little reasonable thing which they can clearly recognize as reasonable, they will always find the next step more easy both to see and take.
Embryos think with each stage of their development that they have now reached the only condition that really suits them. This, they say, must certainly be their last, inasmuch as its close will be so great a shock that nothing can survive it. Every change is a shock; every shock is a pro tanto death. What we call death is only a shock great enough to destroy our power to recognize a past and a present as resembling one another.
Exploring is delightful to look forward to and back upon, but it is not comfortable at the time, unless it be of such an easy nature as not to deserve the name.
Mention but the word “divinity,” and our sense of the divine is clouded.
People are always in good company when they are doing what they really enjoy.
There are orphanages,” he exclaimed to himself, “for children who have lost their parents – oh! why, why, why, are there no harbours of refuge for grown men who have not yet lost them?
We want words to do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbours, and make the best and not the worst of them.
As there can be no translation from one language into another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, or enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought without a jarring and a harshness somewhere.
No boy can resist being fed well by a good-natured and still handsome woman. Boys are very like nice dogs in this respect – give them a bone and they will like you at once.
It is death, and not what comes after death, that men are generally afraid of.
I do not greatly care whether I have been right or wrong on any point, but I care a good deal about knowing which of the two I have been.