But it is the mark of all movements, however well-intentioned, that their pioneers tend, by much lashing of themselves into excitement, to lose sight of the obvious.

People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the world lasts.

No share-pusher could vend his worthless stock, if he could not count on meeting, in his prospective victim, an unscrupulous avarice as vicious as his own, but stupider. Every time a man expects, as he says, his money to work for him, he is expecting other people to work for him.

Have you noticed that the astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of the lot? I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale makes them feel either that it doesn't matter a hoot anyway, or that anything so large and elaborate must have some sense in it somewhere.

Trouble shared is trouble halved.

There's truth as far as you knows it; and there's truth as far as you're asked for it. But they don't represent the whole truth - not necessarily.

What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.