You use a glass mirror to see your face you use works of art to see your soul.
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability.
Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage.
I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.
Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
My reputation grows with every failure.
I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.
Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
Until the men of action clear out the talkers we who have social consciences are at the mercy of those who have none.
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.
Beauty is all very well at first sight but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die do not outlive yourself.
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire the other is to get it.
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.
Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.
A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.
The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
An index is a great leveller.
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.
Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.
All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.
I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.
Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can't sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can't sleep with the window open.
Hell is full of musical amateurs.
Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.
It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.
One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.
The art of government is the organisation of idolatry.
You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Old men are dangerous: it doesn't matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.
You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Power does not corrupt men fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.
When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn't got any.
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.
If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.
Clever and attractive women do not want to vote they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.