Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?

Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse.

Bourgeois morality is largely a system of making cheap virtues a cloak for expensive vices.

When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, "The one I feed the most."

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.