Optimistic lies have such immense therapeutic value that a doctor who cannot tell them convincingly has mistaken his profession.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

Nothing can save us from a perpetual headlong fall into a bottomless abyss but a solid footing of dogma; and we no sooner agree to that than we find that the only trustworthy dogma is that there is no dogma.

No child should be brought up to suppose that its food and clothes come down from heaven or are miraculously conjured from empty space by papa. Loathsome as we have made the idea of duty (like the idea of work) we must habituate children to a sense of repayable obligation to the community for what they consume and enjoy, and inculcate the repayment as a point of honor.

Let not the right side of your brain know what the left side doeth.

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

Marry Ann; and at the end of a week you'll find no more inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins.