Absolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.

A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

The chief objection to playing wind instruments is that it prolongs the life of the player.

Music is the brandy of the damned.