The wisdom of providence is as much revealed in the rarity of genius, as in the circumstance that not everyone is deaf or blind.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

Nothing reveals a man's character better than the kind of joke at which he takes offense.

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.