The great secret...is not having bad manners or good manners...but having the same manner for all human souls.

Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?

My mother married a very good man ... and she is not at all keen on my doing the same.

It is not that I am so clever; it is that everyone else is so stupid.

[...] any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory.

The thief who is in prison is not necessarily more dishonest than his fellows at large, but mostly one who, through ignorance or stupidity [or racism or poverty! - Draffan] steals in a way that is not customary. He snatches a loaf from the baker's counter and is promptly run into gaol. Another man snatches bread from the table of hundreds of widows and orphans and similar credulous souls who do not know the ways of company promoters; and, as likely as not, he is run into Parliament.

Freedom, my good girl, means being able to count on how other people will behave.