The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.
Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.
A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.
The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.
The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.
If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.
My reputation grows with every failure.
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them.
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation.
The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.
A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.
England and America are two countries separated by the same language.
Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.
The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.
A happy family is but an earlier heaven.
Virtue is insufficient temptation.
What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?
All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.
Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.
When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.
It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.
The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.
Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.
It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
There is nothing more dangerous than the conscience of a bigot.
The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.
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.
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