When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, whither do we turn? To the murder column.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

The schoolmaster is the person who takes the children off the parents' hands for a consideration. That is to say, he establishes a child prison, engages a number of employee schoolmasters as turnkeys, and covers up the essential cruelty and unnaturalness of the situation by torturing the children if they do not learn, and calling this process, which is within the capacity of any fool or blackguard, by the sacred name of Teaching.

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

What right has any human being to talk of bringing up a child? You do not bring up a tree or a plant. It brings itself up. You have to give it a fair chance by tilling the soil.

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.