Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.

First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.

To see every day how people get the name 'genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name 'millipede'-not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14-this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.

Nowadays beautiful women are counted among the talents of their husbands.

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.

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.