Every human perfection is allied to a defect into which it threatens to pass, but it is also true that every defect is allied to a perfection.

Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.

First the truth is ridiculed. Then it meets outrage. Then it is said to have been obvious all along.

Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.

Compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.

A man never is happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end, and comes into harbor with mast and rigging gone. And then, it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable; for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing; and now it is over.

I am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again by the stupidity, of my dog; and I have similar experiences with mankind.