It exasperated her to think that the dungeon in which she had languished for so many unhappy years had been unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she had so carefully struggled with and stifled for the sake of keeping well with society, were precisely those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact.

The only sensible person is my tailor. He measures me anew each time he sees me.

You do not settle whether an argument is justified by merely showing that it is of some use. The distinction is not between useful and useless experiments but between barbarous and civilized behaviour. Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character.

I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot.

If you do not say a thing in an irritating way, you may as well not say it at all because people will not trouble themselves about anything that does not trouble them.

The American white relegates the black to the rank of shoeshine boy; and he concludes from this that the black is good for nothing but shining shoes.

The capacity of any conqueror is more likely than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his adversary.