Life on board a pleasure steamer violates every moral and physical condition of healthy life except fresh air. . . . It is a guzzling, lounging, gambling, dog's life. The only alternative to excitement is irritability.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone, the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood

I am very sorry, but I cannot learn languages. I have tried hard, only to find that men of ordinary capacity can learn Sanskrit in less time that it takes me to buy a German Dictionary

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

What is wrong with the prosaic Englishman is what is wrong with the prosaic men of all countries: stupidity.