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