Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

Ye poor posterity, think not that ye are the first. Other fools before ye have seen the sun rise and set, and the moon change her shape and her hour. As they were so ye are; and yet not so great; for the pyramids my people built stand to this day; whilst the dustheaps on which ye slave, and which ye call empires, scatter in the wind even as ye pile your dead sons' bodies on them to make yet more dust.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich-something for nothing.

O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do.

Fashions are induced epidemics.

There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.

I am a sort of collector of religions: and the curious thing is that I find I can believe in them all.