The trouble about always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea.

It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion.

Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity

The perplexity of life arises from there being too many interesting things in it for us to be interested properly in any of them.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.

The miser is the man who starves himself, and everybody else, in order to worship wealth in its dead form, as distinct from its living form.