It seems to be the fate of man to seek all his consolations in futurity. The time present is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate….

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well..

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself..

Academic and aristocratic people live in such an uncommon atmosphere that common sense can rarely reach them..

Christ: I dislike him very much. Still, I can stand him. What I cannot stand is the wretched band of people whose profession is to hoodwink us about ….

Death is only a larger kind of going abroad..

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead..

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both..

Business should be like religion and science; it should know neither love nor hate..

Prayers are to men as dolls are to children. They are not without use and comfort, but it is not easy to take them very seriously..

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes. Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in….

Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have..

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule..

The foundations which we would dig about and find are within us, like the kingdom of heaven, rather than without..

The public do not know enough to be experts, but know enough to decide between them..

Arguments are like fire-arms which a man may keep at home but should not carry about with him..

When the water of a place is bad it is safest to drink none that has not been filtered through either the berry of a grape, or else a tub of malt. Th….

The course of true anything never does run smooth..

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense….

God cannot alter the past, though historians can..

Friends are like money, easier made than kept..