God as now generally conceived of is only the last witch.
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage - but they are also no less invalidated by the marriage of his friends.
They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, 'Can he name a kitten?'
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
A physician's physiology has much the same relation to his power of healing as a cleric's divinity has to his power of influencing conduct.
Vaccination is the medical sacrament corresponding to baptism. Whether it is or is not more efficacious I do not know.
You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it.
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
To himself everyone is immortal he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.
Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.
Death is only a larger kind of going abroad.
There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature.
Theist and atheist: the fight between them is as to whether God shall be called God or shall have some other name.
To give pain is the tyranny to make happy, the true empire of beauty.
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.
Fear is static that prevents me from hearing myself.
A skilful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.
All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
Marriage is distinctly and repeatedly excluded from heaven. Is this because it is thought likely to mar the general felicity?
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.
The worst thing that can happen to a man is to lose his money, the next worst his health, the next worst his reputation.
The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.
God and the Devil are an effort after specialization and the division of labor.
Life is like music it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books.
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
All truth is not to be told at all times.
For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
Faith - you can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.
In law, nothing is certain but the expense.
Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.
Think of and look at your work as though it were done by your enemy. I you look at it to admire it, you are lost.
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
The Bible may be the truth, but it is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Let every man be true and every god a liar.
If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death.
What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth.
Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.
And so there is no God but has been in the loins of past gods.
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him.
The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.
The Athanasian Creed is to me light and intelligible reading in comparison with much that now passes for science.
Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
The want of money is the root of all evil.
Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.