A critic recently described me, with deadly acuteness, as having ‘a kindly dislike of my fellow-creatures.’ Perhaps dread would have been nearer the mark than dislike; for man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
Youth is wasted on the young.
The harder I work the more I live.
Life is a disease; and the only difference between on man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.
Nature holds no brief for the human experiment; it must stand or fall by its results.
Go anywhere in England where there are natural wholesome, contented and really nice English people; and what do you find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.
Money is the counter that enables life to be lived socially; it is life as truly as sovereigns and banknotes are money.
Every step of progress means a duty repudiated, and a scripture torn up.
All progress means war with society.
Where there is no religion, hypocrisy becomes good taste.
Nothing remains beautiful and interesting except thought, because the thought is the life.
Brigham Young lived to become immortal in history as an American Moses by leading his people through the wilderness into an unpromised land.
The best bought-up children are those who have seen thier parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the first duty of a parent.
The British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding.
What is wrong with the prosaic Englishman is what is wrong with the prosaic men of all countries: stupidity.
UNDERSHAFT. I will not call my wife Britomart: it is not good sense.
In eighteenth century France the end was at hand when men bought the Encyclopedia and found Diderot there.
At the end of the book you know Micawber, whereas you only know what has happened to David, and are not interested enough in him to wonder what his politics or religion might be if anything so stupendous as a religious or political idea, or a general idea of any sort, were to occur to him. He is tolerable as a child; but he never becomes a man, and might be left out of his own biography altogether but for his usefulness as a stage confidant.
Don Juan’s supernatural antagonist hurled those who refuse to repent into lakes of burning brimstone, there to be tormented by devils with horns and tails. Of that antagonist, and of that conception of repentance, how much is left that could be used in a play by me dedicated to you?
Here there is nothing but love and beauty. Ugh! it is like sitting for all eternity at the first act of a fashionable play, before the complications begin.