"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"
"People are always good company when they are doing what they really enjoy"
"Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children"
"Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it"
"Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers"
"Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money or the want of money, but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order"
"Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other faculty, bodily or mental"
"Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions"
"Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?"
"Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature"
"It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds"
"It is tact that is golden, not silence"
"It is seldom very hard to do one's duty when one knows what it is, but it is often exceedingly difficult to find this out"
"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"
"It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper"
"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all"
"If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death"
"If I die prematurely I shall be saved from being bored to death at my own success"
"If God wants us to do a thing, he should make his wishes sufficiently clear. Sensible people will wait till he has done this before paying much attention to him"
"I really do not see much use in exalting the humble and meek; they do not remain humble and meek long when they are exalted"
"I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable"
"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"
"The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation"
"Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises"
"It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly"
"Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it"
"Life is not an exact science, it is an art"
"If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue"
"The healthy stomach is nothing if it is not conservative. Few radicals have good digestions"
"The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science"
"Nobody shoots at Santa Claus"
"Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better"
"In the midst of vice we are in virtue, and vice versa"
"In law, nothing is certain but the expense"
"Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning"
"He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still"
"He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us"
"Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence"
"Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself"
"Don't learn to do, but learn in doing. Let your falls not be on a prepared ground, but let them be bona fide falls in the rough and tumble of the world"
"Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day"
"Death is only a larger kind of going abroad"
"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 him"
"Christ was only crucified once and for a few hours. Think of the hundreds of thousands whom Christ has been crucifying in a quiet way ever since"
"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"
"Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both"
"Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them"
"Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance"
"Be virtuous and you will be vicious"
"Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well"
