Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

Girls, like men, want to be petted, pitied, and made much of, when they are diffident, in low spirits, or in unrequited love. These are services which the weak cannot render to the strong and which the strong will not render to the weak, except when there is also a difference of sex.

Social progress takes effect through the replacement of all institutions by new ones; and since every institution involves the recognition of the duty of conforming to it, progress must involve the repudiation of an established duty at every step.

All autobiographies are lies. I do not mean unconscious, unintentional lies: I mean deliberate lies.

Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art.

The British are apt to make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various incapacities as points of good breeding.

I don't know what to say about this book. The experience on which it is founded is so extraordinary, that an honest record of it should be preserved . . . But it would have driven me mad; and I am not sure that the author came out of it without a slight derangement.