Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.
Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime.
To give pain is the tyranny; to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
A man’s friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage – but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
Mr. Tennyson has said that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, but he wisely refrains from saying whether they are good or bad things.
Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.
Genius might be described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds.
Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.
Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.
There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.
People are lucky and unlucky not according to what they get absolutely, but according to the ratio between what they get and what they have been led to expect.
Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.
Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
It is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.
Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning.
Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
Look before you leap, for as you sow, so are you likely to reap.
A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.